For the longest time I didn’t know what the strange looking, igloo-like buildings alongside Chicago expressways were all about. Several years ago I asked Nate if he knew.

“For salt,” he said. “The salt used on streets during the winter is stored there.” That explained the trucks and snowplows lined up outside each building.

Salt is a beautiful thing, forming in crystals made by God’s laws of nature, some so eye-catching they look like valuable art. But salt is more commonly known as a work-horse mineral. Among its uses:

•      Flavoring food
•      Enhancing thyroid function
•      Making ice cream
•      Preserving things
•      Cleansing things
•      Melting ice

That last one is made possible on Chicago roads only because salt is cheap. The earth has a great deal of it, and it’s easy to mine. So it’s shipped from faraway places on barges and trains, and stored in the dome-like buildings along local expressways, then flung on the roads before and during snowstorms.

Scripture actually mentions road salt. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said that salt can lose its flavor. His listeners knew the importance of pure salt, not just to enhance food but in reference to temple sacrifices. The Old Testament repeatedly mentions the covenant of salt, the offerings of salt, and the purity of salt.

Jesus’ sermon compares the positive aspects of salt to the way Christians can effectively represent the kingdom of God. And then he gets to the road salt. Apparently if pure salt is mixed with other chemicals, it becomes un-salty. It’s no longer good for use with food or as a sacrifice, or in any other way. It might as well be thrown on the ground and trampled (or driven over). Then he applied this image to believers who leave others with a bad taste in their mouths about him and his kingdom.

When salt is brought to the storage “igloos” in Chicago, it’s sometimes dumped in through a ceiling hole by way of a conveyor belt. Workmen know the exact slope of the natural pile-up of this road salt, which is the same shape of the buildings: an angle of 32 degrees. The entire space can be filled with salt for efficient, maximum storage.

Jesus wants those of us who’ve entrusted our lives to him to be maximizing our influence for him and to be efficient representatives of his ways and his Word. Just like the domes are completely filled with salt, we’re to be fully filled with him, demonstrating how “tasty” the Christian life can be. He wants us to represent him in ways that are uncontaminated by the world and palatable to non-believers.

Instead of being like road salt, useful only to walk on and drive over, we’re to be like table salt, making others thirsty for more.

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