This time of the year I think of my dad, The Old Man, as he was affectionately known. Dad passed away four years back, but I always think of him especially this time of year because of his love of gardening.
Dad came from a time when folks gardened because they wanted to eat. They grew it and canned it or went without. So dad became an excellent gardener. And what he grew, mom canned. Which they did well into the 1980s.
Dad did love gardening, and he did it as long as he could. There was nothing that man enjoyed more than working in his garden when it was hotter than 10 hells. Then he’d come in the house and drink an entire pot of coffee, made in an old-fashioned percolator that heated it to just this side of liquid asphalt. He claimed it cooled him off.
One year out in that garden, he performed a stunt they still talk about in our part of the country. Now, performing stunts wasn’t anything new to dad. He really didn’t mean to perform them, but he had a lot of unusual ideas. And sometimes he tried to put them into practice. If he’d had money, folks would’ve said he was eccentric. But not having any, most folks just thought he was a kook. And this particular episode stands out as one of his greatest hits.
It seems someone he worked with at Eastern Airlines in Charlotte convinced him that what he needed to do most in life was to go on a salt-free diet. He didn’t have any physical ailments, and he wasn’t overweight. But since all truth and knowledge came from people who threw suitcases in the bottom of airplanes for a living, Dad was determined to do it. And did he ever.
He had mom prepare all our meals without salt. We used a salt shaker, but not him. He even had mom buy him bread that didn’t have salt in it. This foolishness went on until that fateful, hotter-than-10-hells afternoon under a blazing hot sun, when a salt-free Old Man went up to his garden to work – and ultimately collapsed in the middle of the tomato patch from lack of salt! We had to give him water and salt pills just to get him back to the house. And that cured him – at least from salt-free diets.
In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us the Beatitudes. He tells us we must live this Gospel way of life if we are to become His disciples. When we do so, Jesus tells us we become the salt of the earth. Practically speaking, we know the importance of salt in flavoring and preserving our food and for the proper function and survival of our bodies.
By calling us salt of the earth, Jesus wants to make sure we understand how vital it is for us to live out the Gospel in our lives. And the dangers associated with failing to do so.
What Christ is trying to drive home to us in the Sermon on the Mount is that it’s in how we live our lives – our devotion to God, our relationship with Christ, how we love one another, and how we live out the Gospel – that we become disciples of Christ. And that in this way, through us, the light of the Gospel shines through the darkness of the world to save others.
May we live our lives in Christ so that when others see us, all they see is Christ!
Deacon W.S. “Bill” Melton Jr. serves at St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Gastonia.