Season & Savor: Salt and Light

Nourishing hearts as faithfully as we nourish our tables.

Welcome to Season & Savor Sunday — because feeding our bodies is not enough.

Friends, I have a confession. Last week I was working on a new recipe for you (it’s coming to the blog soon, I promise). I seasoned the meat with everything. Garlic powder, chili powder, onion powder, a little cumin. All the flavors.

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When I taste-tested it after making the recipe, something wasn’t right. I ran through the whole spice cabinet in my head, trying to figure out what I forgot. And then it hit me. Salt. I forgot the salt. The one thing that makes everything else actually taste like something, and I skipped right over it.

So then I remade it, this time adding the salt, and just like that, everything popped. Same dish. One ingredient. Completely different.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that after. Because Jesus talks about salt too, in Matthew 5:13-16, right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount:

“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.” (Matthew 5:13, NLT)

Isn’t that us sometimes? Adding every seasoning we can think of. Busy, striving, doing all the things. And forgetting the one thing that actually makes it mean something.

Then a few verses later, He switches to light:

“You are the light of the world, like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house.” (Matthew 5:14-15, NLT)

I’ve noticed the light changing lately. Have you? The days are still long, but the sunrise is coming a little later now, and the sunset a little earlier. Just a few minutes at a time. You barely notice it happening until one day you do.

That’s kind of where I’ve been. Nothing dramatic. Just a slow edging toward heavier. Our family and friends have had some hard things going on, the kind that don’t resolve in a day, the kind that just sit on your heart, in the back (and sometimes front of) your mind, for a while.

But here’s the thing I want to tell you, and maybe I need to hear it more than you do. You don’t have to pick. Heavy or light. Salty or sweet. You get to hold both.

This week alone, in the middle of the hard stuff, I ran into a friend on my morning walk, and we talked for twenty minutes while getting our steps in. I got the sweetest email from one of you (I mean it, I love hearing from you, keep them coming). I had a long, good conversation with my husband after dinner a few nights in a row, one of those really connecting times, we needed that, I needed that!

Salt and light. Same week. Sometimes the same day.

So if you’re carrying something heavy right now, I’m not going to tell you to snap out of it. But I will tell you to keep your eyes open for the salt and the light. The friend on the walk. The email. The conversation. Or maybe it’s watching a movie that evokes all the emotions (I do that sometimes; my go-to cry-laugh movie is Steel Magnolias). Because sometimes all you need is a good cry to feel a little better. Maybe especially now.

So take a minute to think of the “seasoning” you are missing, or maybe it’s just doing something that lightens up your load and your soul. Even on the heavy days. Especially on the heavy days.