A Little Salty

There’s an old wooden case filled with salt spoons hanging on the wall of our dining room. 

A salt spoon is a tiny spoon that people used to scoop salt from a tiny dish called a salt cellar. Those were the days before salt shakers were a thing.

When I was about eight years old, my grandmother decided that I should begin collecting salt spoons. 

“Who knows?” she would say, “Maybe when you’re grown up, you’ll have enough of them to have a party where each of your friends can have her own salt spoon and salt cellar.”

We would talk about that party, and I would imagine who would be there and the fancy gowns they would wear.

When my grandmother and I visited flea markets and antique stores, we would talk about which friend the tiny spoon we were purchasing would be for. The pearl-handled one could be for Callista, and the cherub would be for Julie.

I never had the planned party. My life looks very different than the picture my grandmother painted.

But the salt spoons still hang in their exalted case in the dining room, a reminder of days gone by.

I noticed them again the other day when we had a different sort of party.

It was my son’s eighth birthday. There were my four children, my husband and I, two interns who are staying with us for the month, a friend from church, and a friend and her two-year old daughter, who calls us “Gramma and Papa.” 

We used paper plates (with dinosaurs on them) and plastic forks. We ate pizza and cookie cake and didn’t use salt at all. 

However, there was a lot of the salt of the earth gathered around the table. 

Jesus told His followers: “You are the salt of the earth…” and the Apostle Paul wrote, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”

We laughed together and rejoiced at what He has done for us, no salt spoons required.

Our granddaughter got upset when it was time to leave, and her mom told her, “Don’t be so salty.”

The sting of salt in a wound or the bitterness of salt tears is indeed salt we avoid when possible. No one wants a little dish of either, even if it comes with a sweet little spoon to scoop it with.

However, the salt Jesus brings adds flavor to any dish, brings healing to hurts, and preserves what would otherwise decay. One of my little salt spoons is shaped like a shovel. A shovel is exactly what you need when you’re talking about the Jesus sort of salt. 

That’s the kind of salt that makes me want to tell my granddaughter, “Oh! Do be salty! Be the salt of the earth! Trade your ideas of what a party should be for feasting at His banqueting table.”

There, you will always be satisfied.