A Spacious Life by Ashley Hales

Author:Ashley Hales
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contentment;content;hustle;hustle culture;Christian hustle culture;boundless;boundaries;god's boundaries;rest;restful life;spacious life;purpose in life;joyful life;purposeful life;hustle lifestyle;restful lifestyle;freedom in christ;freedom in Christianity;Christian living;good God;god's goodness
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2021-06-30T10:36:18+00:00

We are invited into the constraints of real community—with people who vote differently, and who look different and speak differently than we do—so that we all may be formed into something altogether new.

Curled up on our couch one night, I leaned forward as I watched Samin Nosrat eat. She chewed meat and looked longingly at ice cream. She ate tacos in Mexico, artisanal soy sauce in Japan, and fresh pasta in Italy in her Netflix documentary Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. I wanted to eat like that, laugh like that, cook like that. She recommended that pasta water be as salty as the ocean as she dropped palmfuls into the boiling water.

Her cookbook by the same name breaks down each ingredient of good cooking. On salt, she says, “Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient.” But salt is also significant in other ways: “We need to consume it regularly in order to be able to carry out basic biological processes, such as maintaining proper blood pressure and water distribution in the body, delivering nutrients to and from cells, nerve transmission and muscle movement.” Salt is not only vital for survival, but makes food delicious. It brings out flavor and it helps us do the work the body is designed to do.

In Matthew 5, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that God’s presence is not limited by a temple or tabernacle. Rather than focus on a place as the locus of worship, the advent of the Son of God expands God’s people and God’s place—so now it is the wider people of God who are to be salt—to be a blessing to the nations. Jesus tells his listeners what the kingdom looks like: it is full of blessings for those who are peacemakers, who are persecuted, who are poor and meek. God has not forgotten the plight of his people. He reminds his hearers that they are “the salt of the earth”—their purpose is to provide saltiness to the earth (Mt 5:13).

Salt isn’t very effective in single crystals. It needs to be gathered together to have any effect. We are to be scooped like handfuls of salt and tossed into water. We are to be a rub to tenderize meat. We are to be used to preserve the flavor and taste of food so it does what it’s supposed to do—to help us work right, to nourish, and to delight. We’re really not much use on our own. We don’t do what we’re supposed to do as lone rangers. God’s people are gathered salt.

The purpose of salt is not to win awards, to catalog how amazing salt is. The purpose of salt is not to overwhelm a dish so the food is inedible. Neither is it to grow so stale or isolated that it’s no longer useful. As Samin Nosrat reminds us, salt “has its own particular taste, and it enhances the flavor of other ingredients. Used properly, salt minimizes bitterness, balances out sweetness, and enhances aromas, heightening our experience of eating.

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