“Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6, NIV).

It was my time to attend on consult rounds today. I walked into the ICU with two of my residents to evaluate a man who was recovering from respiratory distress. As I entered, he looked up, smiled and said, “I finally get to see a seasoned physician.” I responded, “That’s a nice way to put it.”

There are lots of words for doctors my age: “Senior,” “Older” or “Elderly.” I like the word “seasoned.” It suggests more than chronology. It suggests I’ve been through a season or two and presumes I learned something in those seasons that my younger colleagues had not yet grasped, possibly wisdom. Not that I claim that for myself.

Both Jesus and Paul thought seasoning was good.

Jesus told us that we are the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13).

Paul told us that all our words should be “seasoned with salt” (Colossians 4:6)

It is good to be seasoned. The world needs us so.

Does my life provide a seasoning that this world needs?

When I meet friends and family and patients and strangers, do they feel that life is better?

Do they understand grace because I was there? Have they moved a step closer to the presence of God?

Or has my conversation and presence pushed them one step closer to a temporary, tasteless, secular life?

Today, with those I meet, will I intentionally season their lives with goodness and grace and preservation? Or will I be more like worn out salt that coats the road after an ice storm?

“…if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (Matthew 5:13, NIV).

If we are disciples of Christ, we are the “salt of the earth”—but we can’t try to be salt in ourselves. Our saltiness comes from the Christ who walks beside us.

And we are effective seasoning for the world in inverse proportion to the distance we walk from Jesus.

Dear Father,

Please help me become the salt that saves, flavors and preserves, in Christ.

Amen