How interesting it is that we recall certain events that happened so long ago.

When I was a very young boy, I was terribly afraid of the dark.

My mother had some friends that lived across the street from us in a small apartment house. Sometimes my mother would take me along to visit the friends, and most of the time it was at night. To get to the apartment we had to go through a dark alleyway and up some back steps.

In the dark recesses of the alley there was a big trash can, and there was a large football shaped thing sticking out of it. It was very scary, with a large grin on what looked like a face. Whenever we got near it going down the alley, I would scurry around from one side of my mother to the other. Mom would scold me and warn me that I was going to trip her doing that.

About that same period of time, I was having a recurring bad dream that always started with me sitting at the kitchen table. A large dark, sinister figure would come through the door. There was some bargaining going on. If I could run from the table through a small room and make a left turn into another room, I would be free. I never made it! When I got to the second room I would be engulfed in a thick cloudy blanket of dark. I would wake up from the dream fearfully clutching my blanket to my face. This was a recurring dream that went on for some period of time. Finally it so happened that the dream started again one time and once again I was running to get to that second room, but in front of me before making the left turn, there was a window. This time I dove through the window and, living on the third floor flat, I started falling to the ground. There was a flash of light and before I hit the ground, I woke up!

I never had that dream again and also, the scary football face across the street was gone!

So many of us are looking for the light out of the darkness. Sometimes the light comes from different things and different places. In Israel along the shore of the Dead Sea there is an accumulation of salty material. The natives of the area for centuries have scrapped up that salt deposit and formed small bricks. The bricks would be used for fuel. They could burn and provide light and fire. The fire from the bricks would heat their dome-shaped ovens and the domes got so hot they could put the dough right on top of the dome. They made their flatbread that way. The Aramaic name for the dome-shaped oven is “Earths”.

So if someone refers to you as being “the salt of the earth," you are also the fire, the light.

Be the light that shines in the dark. Be a light to the world!