Salty Popcorn

   This weekend we've have had a lot of rain. We knew it was coming. My husband, who majored in meteorology in college, has been tracking hurricane Sandy and keeping me posted on its predicted path.   Knowing that we didn't want to battle the weather, my husband and I decided to stay home and have a movie marathon. What could be better than snuggling on the couch with your sweetie and watching movies?

Popcorn.

 

  No rainy day movie marathon is complete without popcorn. As I waited on the couch my DH popped us some popcorn in our air popper. (Air popped popcorn is SOOOO much better than the microwave bag stuff. Mostly because you can add your own butter.) Once my hubby plopped down on the couch next to me we started our movie, and of course, started shoveling buttery popped goodness into our mouths.  After a few handfuls, however, my pace slowed dramatically.  The popcorn was very salty.  When I asked my husband about it he explained that the steam from the popcorn was clogging the little holes in the salt shaker, so he ended up just pouring some out from the other side.  This resulted in overly salted popcorn.  As I sat watching our movie and eating very salty popcorn the lesson from last week's Sunday school class popped into my head.  The class had discussed how we as members are the "Salt of the Earth."  I'm not going to go into the details of this lesson, although it was a great lesson, but there was one aspect that kept coming back to me.  They had used an analogy describing salt and its flavor enhancing properties in recipes and compared it to us, as Latter Day Saints, and how we should be missionaries, giving "flavor" to the world around us and enriching people's lives.  The thing that struck me as I chewed on the ever increasingly salty popcorn was that, sometimes too much salt is not a good thing.  Now, I'm not saying too much of the gospel is bad.  It's not, you can never have too much of the gospel in your life.  What I am saying is I think sometimes we get a little too excited with our proverbial salt shakers and maybe get carried away sprinkling our salty goodness on others.  My husband can tell you from his own experience going to high school as one of the few non LDS kids up in Davis County UT that sometimes too much can really be TOO MUCH. 
   Having lived in Virginia for a couples years now, not having everyone on my street be LDS, and being surrounded by people of all different faiths has taught me that the best way to "enhance the flavour" of someone's life is to not pour it on all at once, but instead sprinkle salty goodness a little at a time.  Mostly, I believe in living by example, and providing opportunities for people to ask questions.  I feel like if I try and explain everything I believe all at once it's too much, it becomes way too salty.  So much so that the person I talk to wont want to take another bite, and certainly wont want to try it again.  That's not an effective way to share the gospel. 

   I encourage all of you, in your writing, and in your day to day lives to have a prayer in your heart and let the spirit be a part of your daily lives, so that when you have the chance to spread the Saviour's salty goodness you'll know just how much to use.