“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
- Matthew 5:13-16
I've been working through Matthew with my reading recently and reached the passage on being salt and light to the world. I wanted to do something to represent both parts of the passage and an old style lantern came to mind. I thought about drawing a salt cellar next to it, but then when I was googling inspiration pictures I found a small stone bowl with (pink!) rock salt in it, and that somehow seemed more appropriate.
The passage is one that I find comes to mind a lot as a reminder to me how to act. There's no point saying you're a Christian if you don't act like it, whether that's because you act completely inappropriately, you blaspheme, or just that you don't interact with anyone at all. Being Christians means we're the shop window for God. People should see God reflected in us every day. Of course we're going to have off days, get angry, say things that aren't what God would want. But the overwhelming impression we should leave on others is that we love them, God loves them, and that being Christ-like is something that we aspire to.
Something I noticed when I'd completed this page is that the art isn't perfect - the perspective is off, I got dark patches where there should be light, and the salt doesn't really look like salt. But I still love this page. The art does what I'd wanted it to do, which is to remind me of the important parts of the passage, and I had so much fun creating it. I think fun can be a taboo word when it comes to reading the Bible sometimes, but surely God wants us to enjoy the time we spend reading His Word, so I have no issues with saying I had fun doing this journal, as well as being challenged by the passage.
The prompt for this journal came from Rebekah R Jones' Bible Art Journalling Challenge weeks 30 (light) and 31 (salt).
