I have read several blogs this week talking about what God is doing in people's lives...some are searchng for the answer to that question...some are rejoicng that life is "ordinary" for a change...some are going through significant changes in their lives, too.  It brought to mind a time when I worked on a science experiement with my little girl...she was seven then...below is the story...enjoy...

“Cool, Dad”

It is pretty awesome being the father of a seven-year-old little girl.  I am still “cool”.  What amazed me is that she grasped what I was telling her. She had been doing a science project for her school.  It was an interesting one.  She was trying to make an egg float.  For her experiment, she was adding salt to water until the egg floated.  Incredible actually.  Take a simple thing like salt, add the right amount of it to a cup of water, and an egg will float.  Salt.  That stuff that makes fries taste so good.  The same stuff we sometimes put too much on popcorn.  Without the salt, the water isn’t any good for floating an egg.  It is good for drinking, but everyone knew you could drink water.  You could wash with it.  You could even use it to feed your plants.  But float an egg?  Nope.  Couldn’t do that.  For water to do something a little unusual, a little out of the ordinary, a little extra, it needs salt.  With a little salt added to the water, something happens that wouldn’t have happened without the salt.  The characteristics of the water change.  In a way necessary to do something special, it has been changed.  Oh, it doesn’t look good, so you wouldn’t want to wash with it.  As a matter of fact, with the salt in it, it looks worse.  It certainly doesn’t taste good.  No drinking it now either.  Probably wouldn’t want to water your plants with it either.  But now, with the salt in it, the water can do something it could never do before – it can keep an egg afloat. 

Well, you might ask what that has to do with being “cool”.  Good question.  I decided to take the opportunity to talk to my little girl about something Jesus taught.  It is a simple little phase found right there in Matthew Chapter 5.  It is seven little words tucked away in verse 13.  Almost a throw-away line, in the middle of a long speech.  Jesus talking to us says, “You are the salt of the earth”.  We are the salt.  So, I asked my little girl what that means.  She looked at me like “what does that have to do with floating eggs, daddy?”  I explained to her that the salt had changed the water to do something more than it could have done without the salt.  I explained that we, too, should be able to change the people and things around us to be more than they could be without us.  We should make a difference when we are put in the world just as the salt made a difference when put in the water.  I could tell she was thinking about it.  She gets these wrinkles between her eyebrows when she is trying to understand something.  Then her eyes lit up, she looked up at me and said “Cool, Dad”.  She got it.

So I asked her.  Did the salt have to become something special to change the water?  No. It just had to be salt.  Yes, it had to mix with the water, but the one who placed the salt in the water took care of that.  The salt just went on being salt.  I explained that God is the same way.  We just need to be ourselves.  He will do the mixing.  We just continue being the person God made us to be.  Part of the beauty of letting God work in our lives is that we can then see what he is doing.  We can see when we make a difference in the world just like we can see when there is enough salt to make the egg float.  Then, I asked her, what should we do?  “Give God praise for doing it, of course!”  She knows her place in this world already.  He is God and she is not.  Now for me, I say “Cool, Father”.

I have been thinking and praying a lot lately about being salt in the earth.  I want to live it every day of my life.  I want to see those changes my salt makes.  I want to see what God is doing.  I get excited about it and I pray that others can see God’s hand at work.  It is his promise and not mine – I am the salt of the earth.  I say that without any pride or boasting on my part.  It just is.  Nothing I did made me that way.  Just like nothing the salt did made it that way.  It just was. That is the way God made us.

Just the other day while on my treadmill, I was watching the Video Bible.  I enjoy seeing the scripture walked out word for word.  It makes some of the verses come alive that I never get when I read.  This day one really struck home.  It is actually right there in Matthew Chapter 5 just a few verses later.  Something tells me that isn’t a coincidence.  Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said ‘love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemy.”  I thought about this.  Love my enemy?  It is hard enough loving my wife, much less my neighbor.  I don’t mean that in a bad way, either.  I work hard at loving my wife.  It takes a lot of energy.  Then there’s loving my kids.  That takes a lot of work, too.  I mean, just loving that brood would exhaust that little pink bunny with the drum.  Maybe I am just too wimpy.  I can honestly say I only have one friend that I truly love.  Everyone else in my life is just acquaintances and relatives.  Yes, some of them are kind of special, but I can’t honestly say I love them.  Don’t get me wrong.   I could “say” I love them, but my actions certainly don’t follow those words.  So I have to be honest.  Where does that leave my neighbor?   Where does that leave my enemy?  You know, I don’t have any real enemies.  But what about that person at work who stabs you behind the back?  What about that person at church who you just hate to say hi to?  What about that person at scouts who rubs you the wrong way and does it intentionally just to get you wound up?  Yes, my life is full of them.  Maybe those “enemies” are the eggs in my life and I am just the water being burdened with something I cannot do.  Then, where is that salt?  That is the others around me who are walking with the Lord.  They become salt to me to help me be something better than I am without them.  Just like I am to them.  Wow.  We both are salt in the earth helping to change it for the better.  Maybe we can see God’s hand at work in our lives and maybe we can encourage one another by talking about what God is doing.  And maybe that helps us be more salt.  Maybe.

Then, it dawned on me.  The salt changed, too.  Not only did the water change, but so did the salt.  It was still very much salt, but changed.  It was now dissolved into the water.  It takes a significant process to reverse the change that had taken place.  That tells me that as long as we are salt in this earth we will continually change.  Every time we are put into a place where we can be salt to the earth and help somebody (like helping me love my enemy), then we change too.  The conclusion I draw is that since God is the one making the change, then that change is good.

I suppose that is a little too much for my seven-year-old daughter to understand completely, but she sure understood how we can be salt to the earth.  Her eggs floated because salt changed the water.  The circumstances in our lives will change, too, because we are salt in the earth.  Jesus doesn’t say “become” salt.  He says we “are” salt.  So, keep your eyes open.  Watch how God uses you to change the world.  Share that with others to encourage them.  Then, we can all give God the praise.  In a word…that’s “Cool”.