What is Salt Worth if it Loses its Saltiness?

Logo designed by Teri Zebarth

And in future days the Lord’s Temple Mount will be the most important mountain of all; it will be more prominent than other hills. People will stream to it.  Micah 4:1

 When I started hearing God’s call on my heart to start blogging, I put it off. I thought, “Someday I’ll be able to do that, but not now.” Then, as the call grew more insistent, I started taking classes on how to blog. Finally, I took the plunge and prayerfully created my blog, The Salty Zebra.

 When I was learning about blogging, the focus of most of the lessons was on people-pleasing. You were supposed to see what people wanted to hear, and tell them that. You were to discover the most commonly searched words and create blog posts around them. You were to make sure to incorporate numbers into the title, “The 7 best places to eat in Las Vegas,” “10 Ways to build a stronger body,” “Eating for health, 4 Foods you should focus on.” The teaching showed me that I should watch which of my posts got the most feedback, the most hits, the most comments, the most likes, and write more posts like that. The algorithms made sense to my logical brain, but they didn’t sit well with the call that God was putting on my heart.

Logo designed by Teri Zebarth

 I went away on a trip by myself to puzzle through it all as I got started. I prayed over the content God wanted me to present. I prayed over the title of my blog as it would reflect what I was going to share. And then, one afternoon on my trip, I felt like it was time and I opened up Blogger’s website to begin. I was reminded that I had actually started a blog many years ago that I had forgotten. It had twelve posts written in the spring of 2011, mostly about natural living. When I considered going back to it and just continuing, I felt like that wasn’t right, that I was supposed to be starting a new thing.

 As I prayed over the title of my blog, the word, “Salty” came to mind. I prayed through it and several different things popped up. First, I was right on the ocean where I was at and I thought of my love for the water, for travel, how seeing the ocean out my window brought me peace. Next, I was bumping up against several intense physical boundaries on this trip. I didn’t yet know that I had been walking around on two sprained ankles for ten years, but I felt it. The first day of my trip I walked nearly two miles. The next day I walked a mile, but it felt like four. The next day I couldn’t even walk half a mile, and by the fourth day, I was in tears trying to walk a block. To say I was “Salty” about my physical limitations was to put it mildly. The saltiness was also reflected in my somewhat sarcastic nature. This approach to life and conversation was bred into me from birth. It’s how my family operates. I find it comforting and funny, I hope it doesn’t put others off. Finally, as I was walking (on one of the good days) and listening to a prayer from Pray as You Go, I was presented with Matthew 5:13-16 which presents the ideas that we are the salt and light of the world and postulates whether salt has any value if it loses its saltiness. I was intrigued by this. Could salt lose its saltiness? When I got back to my hotel I looked it up and was blown away when one of the top search results was a sermon given by one of my former pastors at his new church. This couldn’t be a coincidence! I sat and listened to it and my decision was made, “Salty” would be in the title of my blog. But salty what?

Logo designed by Teri Zebarth

 I had learned about a year and a half before this that I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS). This is a rare genetic disorder and I had been learning all I could about it, but struggling to connect with real people. The estimate is that 1 in 5,000 people have EDS, and frankly I don’t know 5,000 people. Do you? I had found a few blogs here and there, but they were typically maintained for a short time, and then people disappeared. Either that or they just popped on once or twice a year to post, but there was no continuity. I wanted to find my community, my people. As I was puzzling over what God wanted my blog to be about, He brought this to my attention. If I was looking for my people, others must be too, and they were struggling to find someone like them out there. The Ehlers-Danlos Society has adopted the zebra as it’s mascot for reasons it describes here and they resonated with me as well. Basically, the zebra represents how difficult it is to get a diagnosis or find medical care that even knows about EDS because doctors are taught to “Look for horses, not zebras,” as horses are more common and likely. The thing is, zebras are not mythical creatures, they are real. Just like zebras, EDS is rare, but not impossible. Some people have it. Me. I am some people.

 And so, I became the Salty Zebra, but what does that have to do with today’s verse? This week we are looking at the book of Micah in the Old Testament, and today, specifically, we are covering chapters 3 and 4. Here we encounter verses like Micah 3:5:

This is what the LORD says: "The prophets who mislead my people are as good as dead. If someone gives them enough to eat, they offer an oracle of peace. But if someone does not give them food, they are ready to declare war on him.

And Micah 3:11:

Her leaders take bribes when they decide legal cases, her priests proclaim rulings for profit, and her prophets read omens for pay. Yet they claim to trust the LORD and say, "The LORD is among us. Disaster will not overtake us!"

 I was called to share God’s truth on my blog, to not cave to what people wanted to hear, to not lose my saltiness. Over the years I’ve been doing this I’ve often despaired at a lack of readership. I’ve explored different options of getting word out about what I was writing. How would it help anyone if they didn’t know it existed? I read about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to promote your blog, but, again, it was all about writing things people’s itching ears wanted to hear (2 Timothy 4:3-4). So, I’ve pressed on, sharing more and more of what God put on my heart, even when it was uncomfortable, even when I was afraid of what people would think or say.

Logo designed by Teri Zebarth

Here's the Thing: Someday, the Lord’s Temple Mount will be the most important mountain of all. People will stream to it. I share in hopes that God’s love might touch one more heart, God’s hope could change one more life, that maybe a few of those people streaming to God’s mountain will have been influenced by the Salty Zebra.