In the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus spoke about the two things that make life on earth worthwhile: salt and light. These two things are usually taken for granted, but we could not live without them.

Salt is necessary for life. Consider the beating heart. The heart beats because of a chemical exchange of sodium (salt) and potassium (another salt). Were it not for these salts, we die. When the two are out of balance, the heart doesn’t function well. Having too much salt means the body retains water and that can result in problems. Having too little potassium can also cause problems and can send a person to the hospital.

We need light, too. Without sunlight, crops do not grow. A failure of sunlight would mean the ultimate death of every living thing on earth. God created the world with a source of light because he wanted to create living beings on the earth that would require sunlight. We even consider light as necessary at night, so we have street lights to provide illumination and safety for people at night.

Russians don’t have lights. At night, everything is dreadfully dark. There were times when I walked the streets of Sosnofka or Vyatsky Polyany at night and felt uneasy because there was no light at all.

The world needs salt and light in another way, too. It needs the influence of both for salvation. People need the light of God’s word so they may obey it and live as saved souls. They need salt so they might be the kind of good influence on others that will point the way to salvation.

When Christians don’t provide the salt and light of good influence on the people around them, their friends may find themselves shut out of eternity. On Judgment Day, it would be terrible for our friends and neighbors to point at us and say, “You never told me about Jesus,” or “You never told me what I should do to save my soul.”

Christians need to be the kind of influence on others that can provide the salt and light others need to live eternally. We can provide those two life-saving properties of salt and light if we provide the influence of God in our lives.

When people talk about how many things are wrong in the world, we should give them the two things that are right: Jesus and his word. We should give them the salt and the light!

John Henson