Topics: Evangelism; Influence; Salt
Reference: Matthew 5:13
A man walked into a little grocery store and asked, “Do you sell salt?”
“Ha!” said Pop, the proprietor. “Do we sell salt? Just look!” Pop showed the customer an entire wall of shelves stocked with nothing but salt: Morton salt, iodized salt, kosher salt, sea salt, rock salt, garlic salt—every kind of salt imaginable.
“Wow!” said the customer.
“You think that’s something?” asked Pop. “That’s nothing! Come look.” And Pop led the customer to a back room filled with shelves and bins and cartons and barrels and boxes of salt. “Do we sell salt!” he said.
“Unbelievable!” said the customer.
“You think that’s something?” said Pop. “I’ll show you salt!” And Pop led the customer down steps into a huge basement, five times as large as the back room. It was filled, floor to ceiling, with every imaginable form of salt—even ten-pound salt licks for cows.
“Incredible!” said the customer. “You really do sell salt.”
“That’s just the problem!” Pop said. “We never sell salt. But that salt salesman—hoo-boy, does he sell salt!”
Salt that stays on the shelf doesn’t do any good at all.
—D. James Kennedy, Led by the Carpenter (Nelson, 1999)