Winter has finally arrived, a few months late. As I drove behind the lone salt truck in my county yesterday afternoon before the storm hit, I started thinking about Jesus' words in the gospels during His Sermon on the Mount: "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt loses its saltiness how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot." Matthew 5: 13 So often throughout my life when I've heard this verse discussed, the speaker or writer has analyzed the usefulness of salt as a preservative and something to add flavor. They often use it as a way to illustrate believers in relation to a sinful world. But as I drove on the clear, ice-less roads earlier today, after the salt trucks had done their job, I realized that salt can also be used to keep people from slipping. Perhaps this could be put under the category of being a preservative, in that (in the context of salting icy roads) it protects peop...