A third grade student gave this definition of salt. ”Salt is what you don’t notice until someone forgets to put it in.”

We tend to take many things for granted until they are missing just as this student did the salt. We are wise to notice and appreciate the many unseen things in our lives that so many ignore until they are gone. The oil in our engines, the air in our tires, the water in our radiators, and the salt in our food are all necessary and we find out just how important they are when we discover they are absent. Someone once wisely observed that if the stars shown only one night a year, everyone in the world would see them. Because they shine every evening, many go about never looking up and discovering their grandeur.

Those who have grown children now realize how short a time we have our children safely tucked in their own beds in our home. The time to enjoy them is now. Too many people go through life being whenners, not winners but whenners. When this happens, then we will be happy; when we have more time, when we finish school, when we get a job, when we get a car, when we get a home, when we get our debts paid, when the children are older, when we retire then... The sad thing about whenners is that eventually they get old and they have missed living for they were always going to live ”when.” What do they say at the end of their lives? They talk about the good old days ”when.” Unfortunately life passes the whenners by for they have not learned to live in the here and now. This is the only day we have to live for the Lord. Solomon was right when he advised us saying, ”Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”

It has been said that we should ”live neither in the past nor in the future – but let each day’s work absorb all your interests, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well.”

James said, ”Go to .now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, ”If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.”

Paul knew the secret of happiness but it was something he learned. He told us ”For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am. therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

We too, can learn to be content right where we are, right now. We need to count our blessings every day and not take them for granted until they are gone. This is true of salt, it is true of our children, it is true of our health. Let us wake up each morning and rejoice in the day that the Lord has given us. Every morning when we awake we have been given another 24 hours to spend. We cannot spend tomorrow or re-spend yesterday but this day is ours to live to the full in the service of our Lord. The time to live is now. Be thankful for the good gifts God has given us and remember that we, like Paul, ”can do a]1 things through Christ which strengtheneth us.”