When Salt Loses its Salty Flavor

When a food is said to taste salty, everyone knows what that means; It has a distinct taste with a tingle.  It certainly adds flavor.

 

What gives salt its flavor?  A chemist would tell you that its unique flavor is due to it being an electrolyte but what is an electrolyte?  From a chemist’s point of view for a substance to be classified as salt it must have two charged chemicals, one having a positive charge and the other having a negative charge.  In chemistry opposite charges attract one another just like a magnet.  If you take two magnets and try to get them to come together, they will only attach when the positive side of the one magnet is positioned with the negative side of the other magnet.  If you attempt to join a positive charge magnet of one magnet with the positive side of another magnet you feel the repulsion.  They seem to not want to connect.

 

Table salt is sodium chloride.  The sodium has a positive charge while the chloride has a negative charge and when they attract and attach to each other they become the white crystals we sprinkle on our food to give the food flavor.

 

The salt we sprinkle on our food does not give its unique flavor as the crystal; It must be broken and separated.  The sodium must separate from the chloride causing an “electrical” charge, a positive charge from the sodium and a negative charge from the chloride.  This is what gives salt its flavor.  The take-home message is the salt must be “broken” to be effective.  When it is broken, the electrical charges can be felt.  Not only are the charges felt and cause flavor, but the charges also protect and make salt become a preservative.

 

Brokenness is the key, broken can mean broken from pride and self.  When we are broken, we are open to God and his strength and power.  When we are broken, we become dependent on God.

 

Another analogy of salt is Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back to Sodom.  She looked to her past.  She looked back and the looking back caused her to turn into a pillar of salt.  The pillar of salt was the crystal which is not effective.  Salt as a crystal cannot perform its magic and power.  It must be broken into individually charged particles.

 

Looking back to our past failures can cause us to become paralyzed or to turn into a pillar of salt.  Brokenness is coming to an end of self and becoming dependent on God.

 

God is a God of forgiveness and wants us to look and move forward, not stop and look back as Lot’s wife did.  We have all failed and looking back at past behavior and past failure can prevent us from moving forward.  We can easily become a pillar of salt and lose our flavor.  Let’s try to look and move forward.