Salt Water.

I freaking hate salt water.
It tastes nasty, burns my eyes, burns in my cuts and makes my skin itchy. It is that bad kind of itchy that scratching doesn't help.
I love fresh water.
It tastes good, agrees with my eyes, leaves my cuts alone, and doesn't make my skin itchy.(Unless, of course, it is the water from my shower in Austin, which dries my skin out like jerky.)

I have two glasses of water, one salt, and the other fresh. If I lift the fresh water and pour a small amount of it into the salt water glass, the salt water is still salt water. But if I pour a small amount of the salt water into the fresh water, I now have two glasses of salt water. Concentration of salt is irrelevant, for there is salt in both and that is final.

James says that our mouths flow both blessing and cursing; fresh and salt water. I have always assumed that the curses were salt water because they burn and itch, and the blessings were fresh water because they are pure. I want to challenge this notion. If we read the bible through the lense of the sermon of the mount, salt will trigger a flag. We are the salt of the earth.

How can we be the salt of the earth and not produce water with salt in it?

Salt burns because it cleans. When it gets in a cut, it cleanses. When it gets in your eyes, it sucks. But I do know that my eyes are evil and disobedient, so I'd hope that they would react to cleansing. Everyone who has used Listerine knows that it only works if it hurts!

The words we speak are the overflow of our heart. So if we ever speak truth then there is salt water coming up, even if it is extremely diluted by the fresh water. The cool thing about the salt is that by its very nature, it is what defines the solution around it. If I have one tablespoon of salt in my friend's swimming pool, it is technically salt water.

Currently, my pool is mostly fresh water, with a small spoon of salt in it. While it is mostly curses, blessing is present and dominant. Imagine what life would be found if I was pumping water with a higher concentration of salt and a smaller concentration of suck. When the water in my heart is drank, the small amount of salt I gave is mixed with the water in the listener's heart.

This is where it gets serious. This means that speech is not the issue. This means that the heart is the issue. My friend, Wes, told me that there is no use in trying to tame the tongue. We should instead just pursue the purity of the heart so our tongue becomes a life bringing tool. In other words, don't arrest the drug dealers, burn the field of opium and plant a field of potatoes.(Everyone loves potatoes, except Travis Chapman... Sorry, man.)

Pray for the purity of your heart. Spend more time on this spiritual matter and less time on the social treadmill of taming the tongue. James and Wes agree on the fact that the tongue can't be tamed. Plus, why limit something that brings blessing?

It is my prayer that this water has enough salt to burn our wounds. Please excuse the weak, diluted, solution that it is. I assure you, any salt is from the Lord and is much more definite than the fresh water is has graciously mixed with. My goal is to be like the dead sea; so thick with salt that people can walk on it.