Salt & Light

Like a few other podcasts I have embedded and talked about in these posts, there is another I had watched once and saved.  It had probably shown up in my news feed on YouTube sometime after it was published a year ago and I had been curious enough to click on it back then.  It was phenomenal and I remember being blown away by what it said.  Some time in the last month or two, I found it and listened to it again during one of my walks and loved it just as much.

After listening to all that people said about Morgan at the Celebration of Life and remembering the comments on Facebook when she first passed, I began to think that she seemed to have done a good job in my opinion, of being the salt and light in the manner that the podcast spoke.

Here’s the podcast.  I listened again just this morning on my walk to solidify it in my memory again before writing. It is almost 30 minutes long, so you may need to come back and watch it sometime later, but I promise, if you call yourself a Christian, it is something you will want to do.

Why do I feel Morgan succeeded here?

The speaker starts the podcast (love the British accent by the way) by saying, “You are the salt of the Earth and the light of the world, and in both cases, that is not by saying anything or by doing anything, but by being something.  Salt affects its environment simply by being what it is.  And light affects its environment simply by being what it is.  Not by saying or doing anything.  And if we’re going to be salt and light, it’s not going to be by a lot of talk, or even by a lot of action, that we’re going to be salt and light, it’s by being totally different from our environment, and so different that we affect it.”

Both of my children were taught to have empathy and sympathy from an early age.  They never witnessed my hubby or me being rude to a waiter or waitress or any other customer service agent for that matter, and were told stories with humor of people they knew who had not been as kind.  We aren’t perfect, but we did our best to model being salt and light ourselves.  By junior high and high school, both children were comfortable in their own skin and could therefore feel good about sticking up for a classmate when other children they knew were giving that person a hard time.  I had close relationships with my kids, and they relayed the types of things that happened at school to me, probably for praise of course, which I heartily gave.  We tried to teach them the difference between being a giver or a taker and the difference between intrinsic gratification and extrinsic gratification.

At the Celebration of Life, the friend named Emily told a story that I’d never known.  It was their first day of beach volleyball team practice when Morgan was a sophomore in high school. Emily was the only one who didn’t know anybody.  She’d come from a completely different high school and had never even played beach volleyball.  Morgan befriended her immediately and started the introduction with humor.  That began a bond that lasted until the end.  Sure, the bond was stronger sometimes than other times, but where is that not the case? Morgan being salt and light probably changed the course of both Emily’s and Morgan’s lives, and the ripple effect from that is something we’ll, or they’ll, only know about upon death itself.

A story that we were well aware of also took place in the high school years.  There was a certain boy with some emotional problems at Morgan’s very large high school who was often ridiculed by other students.  Morgan was a safe haven for this student, as he knew that she’d never hurt him.  Over the course of a couple of years, it seemed he began stalking her.  He’d show up in her classes or be right outside the door.  This was when the administration, even in a conservative school district, began to allow the abnormal behavior of students to be totally acceptable and catered to.  It creeped her out, but she continued to be nice enough to him.  At some point sophomore or junior year, he gave her a homemade weapon.  He used rope to wrap a thick stick to a sharp chiseled rock, so it basically looked like an ax.  There was no threat by him with this gift, she wasn’t scared to get it, but it was weird. We kept it in our basement for some reason and as we were moving to Alabama in 2019, I came across it and took a picture and sent it to her before throwing it away.

During second semester of her senior year of high school, this young man trusted Morgan so much that he either gave her a note or spoke to her in between classes (hubby’s memory and mine are not in sync) which stated he had dark thoughts and wanted to cause some kind of harm to people at school.  She confided in a friend of hers and together they went to the administration.  My hubby recalls getting a phone call from the school resource officer telling him that it’s great that our daughter is nice to this student, but that she’s actually being naïve, because he could in fact be dangerous.  The student was told to stay away from Morgan, and thankfully he complied. Nothing happened from him to the student body either.

During her college years and beyond we have now been told that she had a fun and inclusive demeanor to both people she knew and people she didn’t.  She was generous.  She made things better.  She was salt and light.

Ever since reading the book “The Purpose Driven Life”, which had a huge influence of the plot in the first fiction book I wrote, “Broken Pottery”, I have felt that our time on Earth is partly a testing experience.  I’m not sure we’re all even given the same test.  Some of us may be tested for one thing from an eternal perspective, and others of us might have a completely different test.  I’m still in the process of working all of this out.  But Morgan’s test, if that’s the case, was completed on December 23rd.  She was allowed to go “back home” or on to the “new home” or whatever the case is to be with God the Creator, Jesus His Son, and the Holy Spirit – three in one.  She completed HER test, and if her’s had anything to do with what I believe mine is, being the Salt and Light I was also shown by those who raised me, then God must be proud of her, too.

I don’t mean a test for salvation, by the way, as salvation is by grace, not by works, but a test or purpose that God alone had for Morgan that she knew of in her soul and countenance. We are showing that we submit to God on this Earth, recognize Him as King, when we try to live as He did and walk the paths He has opened up for us to walk. We can never be perfect at it, and understanding that is the reason for the Gospel.

The other clip I want to include today is a song by Tom Petty.  I think it’s important that we all realize that none of us actually know what any other person feels.  Nobody can possibly know what another’s physiology and emotional thresholds are, and how they can set us up to react differently to similar situations.  Only God knows these things.  I feel that is one of the reasons we should never judge others for the decisions they are making that we know are wrong, but instead lovingly guide them onto a proper path, the one we know is proper because God has told us what the results of that path are, which are the fruits of the spirit.  Galatians 5: 22-23.   ²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

When we judge, perhaps we’re judging other people on the test we ourselves were given.  Worry about your own test.  Do your best with your own test.  Maybe they are doing the best they can with theirs.  Only God knows.