SWEETNESS – The flavour of salt

This blog is taken from the book INsalted – Chapter 7

• Colossians 4:6  Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. 
• Proverbs 16:24  Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.  

Ironically, you have to be seasoned with salt to be sweetened.  Sweetness is the flavour of grace.  It is the pudding in the picnic basket of beauty.

But how do you describe the flavour “sweet” to someone who has never tasted sweetness before?  You can’t.  All you can do is give them a hand full of sugar and make them taste it.  Well, in a similar way it is difficult to describe the characteristics of someone who is sweet.  And yet, when you are in the presence of someone sweet it is unmistakably recognisable.  You know it when you encounter it.

The one thing the Bible is unable to convey is the tone in which Jesus spoke.  We have a recording of His words, we have a clear understanding of what truth contains, but we don’t know how it was conveyed.  But, by the way people responded, we can assume the words of Christ were seasoned with sweetness.

Sadly, we often take the content of truth and mix it with the content of our hearts.  We speak the truth in a way that loses the sweetness that flavoured the words of Christ.  Truth is not only about the saltiness of the content but also about the sweetness of the tone.  So, sweetness, just like beauty, has little to do with what we DO or what we SAY, and everything to do with who we ARE.  It will reflect in our actions and our communication as sweetness flows from the heart and reveals more than actions or words can do.  It can be found in children, young adults, middle aged and old people. And if we are lucky enough to be in their presence, we must simply enjoy them.

But a truly sweet person is also devoid of spice—things like criticism, negativity, boastfulness, cynicism, and sarcasm —all the things that come from the greyer realms of human nature.

The virtue of being sweet is mostly a choice and unsurprisingly links with the trademark of a true disciple – self-denial[1] – the disregard for one’s own feelings, preferences, circumstances or disposition with a desire to bring happiness and light to others. That entails a lot of sacrifice and self-surrender. It also requires meekness and humility and a willingness to obey a higher law.  You simply cannot be self-focussed and still be sweet.

I’ll say it again: Sweetness is a choice that requires a combination of other virtues – gentleness, kindness, tender-heartedness, sincerity and humility.  It is not for the weak or slothful.

Here are a dozen trademarks of a sweet person:

• Always gentle
• Continuously kind
• Forever friendly
• Endlessly gracious
• Never judgemental
• In no way condescending
• Constantly smiling
• Full of hope
• Listens well
• Asks questions
• Remembers names
• Is never loud

Do you radiate a sweetness when you post on Social Media?

[1] Matthew 16:24  Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.