The origin of cheese is not certain.  All that is needed for cheese is milk and salt.  The difference between fresh cheese and aged cheese is salt.  Aging cheese is the process of the slow absorption of salt.  It has been said that it takes two years for the salt to reach the center of a wheel of the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.  In a 1961 speech, Charles de Gaulle said, “Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese.”  French farmers try to preserve milk in salt so that they could have a way of keeping it as a food supply.  But because of different traditions and climates the salted curds came out 265 ways.  After all, salt plays an important role in making cheese.  Roquefort has been known as salty cheese.  

It purifies
The Spanish invented the patio process to extract silver from ore in mid-sixteenth century Mexico.  The sodium in the salt extracts impurities from ore and produces silver.  Salt is still used in some parts of the world to draw out the infection from an insect bite or the prick of a thorn.  Military generals have known the importance of salt.  In Napoleon’s retreat from Russia, thousands died from minor wounds because the army lacked salt for disinfectants.  

It harmonizes
Guillaume Francois Rouelle wrote a definition of salt in 1744.  His most important achievement was to define salts as the compounds formed by the union of acids and bases, and further to distinguish between neutral, basic and acid salts.  He understood that an acid and a base have a natural affinity for each other because nature seeks completion and, as with all good couples, acids and bases make each other more complete.  Acids search for an electron that they lack, and bases try to shed an extra one.  Together they make a well balanced compound, salt.  All believers of Christ are members of one body, and they are knitted together and grow together.  Sodium chloride forms crystals with cubit symmetry.  In these, the larger chloride ions are arranged in a cubic close-packing, while the smaller sodium ions fill the octahedral gaps between them.  The nature and shape of salt show its harmonious attributes.  However, we also need to know that chlorine was the basis of gas warfare.  Chlorine gas has also been known as mustard gas.  What kind of salt are you, or are you going to be, harmonious or explosive?

It empowers
The medieval Chinese knew about sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate and used it for gunpowder.  Nehemiah Grew, a British plant physiologist, isolated a salt, magnesium sulphate known as Epsom salt, which is now used not only medically but in the textile industry, for explosives, in match heads, and in fireproofing.  John Brown studied about Epsom salt and discovered the third salt known to be magnesium chloride, which led Sir Humphry Davy found a new element, magnesium in 1808.  In 1792, sodium carbonate, soda, was made from mother liquor.  Davy, in fact, named sodium after soda.  Sodium hydrogen carbonate, bicarbonate of soda, is used for both food and glass making and textiles.  Sodium carbonate is used in making paper, plastic detergents, and the artificial fabric rayon.  Carl Wilhelm Scheele found chlorine in 1774.  Chlorine is the chemical element with atomic number 17 and symbol Cl.  As the chloride ion, it is a part of common salt.  French chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet created a liquid bleach based on chlorine, and another salt-based industry was founded.  Chlorine has been used for bleach, water treatment, sewage treatment, and making of plastics and artificial rubber.  Salt also was used to make soda ash, caustic soda, bicarbonate of soda, and other chemicals.  It is worth noting that oil, gas, or both are frequently found on the edge of salt.  Truly salt helps others to be empowered.  So Christians do.

It varies
We have always thought of salt as salt.  However, gourmet chefs recognize that there are many varieties of salt, and there are some salt called “gourmet salt” such as black salt, coarse salt, fleur de sel, grey salt, Hawaiian sea salt, kosher salt, Celtic salt, flake salt, French sea salt, Grinder salt, Italian sea salt, and many others.  About 4,700 years ago-there was published in China the Peng-Tzao-Kan-Mu, probably the earliest known treatise on pharmacology.  A major portion of this writing was devoted to a discussion of more than 40 kinds of salt, including descriptions of two methods of extracting salt and putting it in usable form that are amazingly similar to processes used today.  Christians are different members of one body.  

It softens
There is water containing excessive calcium and magnesium.  This water is called “hard water.”  It can dry our skin, make our hair dull, and leave mineral deposits in sinks, around faucets and in pots and pans used to boil water.  These deposits should be removed on a regular basis -- they can corrode faucets and pipes and cause rust in sink and tubs.  Water softening systems have been used for hard water; otherwise, hard water destroys the efficiency of industrial boilers.  Most notably in the home, hard water inhibits proper suds of soaps, shampoos and detergents.  Most water softening systems pass the water through a bed of special resins, which can exchange sodium ions for the "hard" calcium and magnesium ions in the water.  Eventually, the resin exhausts its sodium and must be "recharged." This is done by running salt brine, containing sodium, through the resin bed, removing the calcium and magnesium ions from the bed and leaving a new supply of sodium.  Many industries require softened water for such uses as processing and dyeing textiles, tanning leather, cleaning dairy equipment and commercial laundering.  Salt softens hard water.  It also deices.  Salt is also used to keep snow and ice from bonding to the pavement.  

Sometimes the two terms, “salt” and “sodium” are used interchangeably, but technically this is not correct.  “Salt” is sodium chloride.  By weight, it is 40% sodium and 60% chloride. Sodium is an essential nutrient, a mineral that the body cannot manufacture itself but which is required for life and good health.  Sodium is the major extracellular electrolyte responsible for regulating water balance, pH, and osmotic pressure.  It is important in nerve conduction.  Chloride is essential to good health, too.  It preserves acid-base balance in the body, aids potassium absorption, supplies the essence of digestive stomach acid, and enhances the ability of the blood to carry carbon dioxide from respiring tissues to the lungs.  Where public health authorities do not fluoridize water, adding fluoride to salt is common as in France, Switzerland and Latin America (http://www.saltinstitute.org/27.html).  All of these invaluable information indicate that salt is necessary for our life and existence.  Likewise, Christians are to be the salt in the world.  They must be the ones who must be here for the sake of the world.  By their being here, the world must be better!

Lovingly,
Your Pastor

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