Could you please pass the Stef?

Good morning!  I have a question for you.  What kind of person are you?  Do you brighten up the room when you walk in with your sunny disposition?  Do you have the knack for making others feel welcome with your outgoing personality?  Are you the prankster--always playing jokes to make those around you loosen up?  Or, are you the salt, the one who adds the flavor, the one who makes things tastier, more enjoyable, and adds just the right touch?  

Salt does that you know.  Imagine a nice bowl of popcorn but wait!  Someone forgot to put the seasoning on it!  This near-perfect food resembles something that tastes more like one imagines styrofoam would.  Obviously if salt wasn't added to pork, our Country Ham would just be...well, it would not be good.  I daresay Bojangles wouldn't sell as many biscuits!  Many like to add a sprinkle or two of salt to their vegetables, to bring out the natural flavor and enhance it with just a smidge of this delightful seasoning.  

It's one of the things I wonder about:  how would the world survive without salt?  It's so cheap to buy yet I cannot imagine my life without it.  What if the seasoning brokers decided to hold it hostage and would only allow purchases of it for much more than the price we pay now?  How much would you be willing to fork out for this flavoring that the doctors try to tell us we don't need so much of anyways?

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus told us:  

You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?  It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

 Well, I don't know about you, but I surely don't want to be classified as such! Let's pray!

"Good for nothing" Lord?  May it not be!  No no:  instead, make me the one who adds that special something to the meals of this world.  You know, Lord, the kind who brings out what's already there, inside, yet maybe just needs a little prodding, a little shake of Stef, to make it better than before.  Make me, Lord, that condiment that folks don't want to be without.  'Please pass the Stef' they will say, Father, when there just seems to be a little something missing.  Use me, I ask, to not be trampled beneath folks as they search for other ways of making things go down easier but to be the first thing they reach for, that they take off of their shelves, as the world needs sometimes a little more seasoning to make the cares of this world easier to swallow.  

May it be so is my prayer this morning.  In the name of Jesus I ask it.  Amen.

PS
Even Jimmy Buffett is on the lookout for salt.  Remember his song "Margaritaville" about how he's looking for his lost shaker of it?  It's become such an iconic song that when that line is sung, the audience responds by crying  "Salt!  Salt!  Salt" after he croons it out.  They are searching.  Jimmy is still reminding us of his need for it.  Be the salt, friends.  Be the salt.