The Art of Busy

The Art of Busy

Hey all, first off I want to apologize for this being a day late. That's my fault, and I hope that you have all had a fantastic week so far. Today we are going to be looking at an idea of busy. How it is the business in life that we crave and this craving effects us.

Our passage of the week is found in Mark 9:50:

⁵⁰ “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

Now normally I don't feel that it's appropriate to pull one verse out of its context and just use it, because it was placed in its location for a reason. The previous portion of Mark 9 talks about how one shouldn't be a stumbling stone for others. We are given the example of if your eyes cause you to stumble it is better to pluck them out than to be cast into hell. A super intense illustration of what Jesus is trying to teach. This leads us into our verse, which talks about salt. 

Now the classic verse that people generally read is found in Matthew, but this one really jumps out. The first thing we focus on in this passage is this, Salt tastes good. Salt makes everything taste better and thus most people love salt. You have something about you that is salty. There is something about you that when you interact with other people, the people see this thing. Now this salt can be anything, your humor, your looks, your kindness, even your humility. Jesus asks for His love to be our salt, for it to be overflowing in our hearts so that it pours out onto others.

Now I have rarely seen someone scrape salt off of something before, unless it was just too much salt for them to handle. The same applies to people, we are all willing to interact with people and see what they are doing unless we don't like their salt. We try to lessen the impact that their life will have on us by moving on. In this passage though the question is raised though of how do you make something salty again?

People will soak up your salt no matter where you go, the question is how much are you spreading that salt? Have you ever bit into something and just gotten huge mouthful of salt? As if the chef when preparing the food got distracted and poured salt continuously into one area. Salt is small, and in the grand scheme of things the influence that we have is small. I feel that sometimes we bounce in between two extremes of social interaction.

On one side, we stay in the same area for so long. Jesus was constantly moving in His ministry, one day his disciples found Him alone and asked why He was alone, there was a crowd waiting to see Him. Jesus told them that it was time to go, it was time to move onto the next town. Jesus came here to love on all people and show them God's love.

On the other side we have too much business to ever spend time with people and have life experience together. The verse says to have salt with each other so that there may be peace. We sometimes try to have such a busy life trying to bounce around from area to area that we forget to ever just be and live life. We feel that we have to be everywhere all the time or else we are failing the kingdom of God by not being His hands and His feet to the whole world. 

A final analysis of salt though shows that it's never just one crystal. Even Jesus did not attempt to tackle the world alone. He knew that business and trying to do so would be impossible. So breathe, love, and spread the good news of His love one interaction at a time. 

Thank you for reading and God bless.