Pillar of Salt

I don't know why, but this particular day, the idea of someone turning into a pillar of salt seemed to be one random thought that wouldn't leave. Salt is an essential element to our bodies, not enough and you can't function well, too much and it functions poorly in other ways. It requires balance.

Here are some salt facts: (trust me, there is a point - besides the one on my head!)

SOURCE: http://www.healthmad.com/Nutrition/Important-Things-You-May-Not-Know-Regarding-Common-Salt.32582

Salt is very important for survival of most of the animals and particularly human. Without salt, the process of removing the excess of acid from the different body cells especially brain cell is hampered.

Salt balances the blood sugar level in our body and prevents muscle cramps.

Salt generally prevents the excessive saliva production, if you drool on your pillow, check your salt level.

Hospitals & private clinics make good fortune by charging around $300 for salt water also known as saline 4 bottle installed. But they won't disclose the fact that what the patients require is more salt and water in their diet.

There is vast difference between refined salt and unrefined salt as far as nutritional value is concerned. The taste of refined and unrefined salt is very different.

Refined salt or the common salt which we use daily in our food is 99.9 percent pure sodium chloride. It contains Aluminum silicate for it's free flow property.

Unrefined salt which our ancestor used in their food is only 98 percent pure sodium chloride. The rest of 2 percent is other minerals. Research has revealed that there are hundreds of different minerals and around 79 basic elements found in natural salt. Some important minerals are: salts of Potassium, calcium, phosphorous, Magnesium, Manganese and many more.

In the process of making the refined salt, all the essential trace materials known as impurities is removed and the salt is heated to very high temperature to crack down the original molecular structure of the salt.

So just how might this relate to the story in the Bible of Lot's wife?

Okey dokey, let's try this on for size:

• The mother is very important for survival of the human family. Without the mother, the process of caring for the family and removing the traces of the world from our home and from our thoughts is hampered. Men are good at doing a lot, but women do tend to be more easily entreated when it comes to spiritual matters.
• Mothers balance the good and the bad within the family. They can be the emotional barometer of ‘success in the home’.
• Like salt, Mothers prevent the family activity from cramping up the calendar with overloaded schedules and crashes of obligations.
• When children have trouble sleeping at night, the generally need their mother. While Dad can fit the bill sometimes, there are other times when only Mom will do.
• You can pay a lot of money to hire people to do what a mother does in the course of a day, but seldom do the experts tell you that no amount of money will ever replace “a mother’s heart”.
• There is a vast difference between a woman who is refined and approaches life with a personal elegance and one who lacks any sense of character. Emotional nurturing comes from a woman who knows her worth and has a savor all her own to help her balance out her responsibilities to others against the responsibility to self.
• The tastes of refined women and unrefined women are very different. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong, they are just very different.
• A pure woman is comprised of many elements of the Spirit and has a free flow of tears whenever life is stressful or the Spirit of the Lord moves upon her in a personal way.
• An unrefined or uncultured woman in gospel terms is filled with the pollutants of the world. While she may look okay from a distance, up close she might be toxic or leave a bad taste in your mouth from the example she shows.
• Finally, the process of refining a woman is much like refining salt or silver. Both require high sustained heat (or trials) in order to remove the impurities of life and leave the finished product as something that is desirable and to be desired.
  
  Lot missed out on that particular benefit as his helpmeet went in another direction. Because of her choice to look back onto the wickedness she was commanded to flee, she was turned into a pillar of salt. Like Brylcreme, a little dab will do you, but she was a truckload salt lick which became a 'see what can happen to you' moment for a millennia.

While there is no 'alternate ending' to the story of Lot's wife, I can imagine what might have happened had they all been able to flee together. Being a typical mother, she would want the best for her daughters. After all, they had just fled from a city where women weren't valued one whit by most of the men there. And I don't subscribe to the belief that they were 'made that way'. That's a load of manure. They chose wickedness and wanted Lot to partake of their wickedness, too.

When fire and brimstone rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah, it wasn't because the people didn't all have the same rights and privileges. Lot's wife wasn't turned into a pillar of salt because her civil rights were violated. They chose to misuse their God-given agency and put themselves into peril.

Both of these happened because the people chose to 'lose their savor', they had chosen to become 'good for nothing but to be trodden under foot of men'. I don't hash through this. If the Bible said she was turned into a pillar of salt, she was.

But what a deficit she left in the lives of her family members who had to go on without her!

An interesting point I read on another website about this was that Lot's wife looking back wasn't an isolated moment of weakness, but rather a visible representation of a life which was focused on the things of the world instead of the things of God.

I think that may be more true than most of us realize. We don't tend to slip into sin and corruption overnight. It's an insidious process that takes time. The flaxen cords which bind so lightly at first become heavy chains from which escape may be genuinely impossible.

I do wonder at times, we often hear about the imperfect in our world as having 'feet of clay'.

Might we also consider the level of salt in our lives...?

How salty am I?