“You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13a,14a).

Nineties kids: raise your hand if you owned a copy of The Lion King on VHS!

(A moment for Gen Z and Alpha to Google “VHS”) :)

For those of you who didn’t spend the entirety of summer 1994 watching it on repeat, the plot of The Lion King in a nutshell is this:

Simba is the crown prince of an African savanna. After his father, Mufasa, dies in an accident staged by his uncle, Simba runs away in shame, because evil Uncle Scar leads him to believe it’s all his fault. Simba stays away for a long time living his best, non-royal life free of any worries (Hakuna Matata!), until he gets word that Scar has taken over the savanna and made it a terrible place for its inhabitants to live. Simba has to choose between continuing to live as something he’s not or face his fear of taking responsibility as king and putting to rights all the wrongs that had been done on the savanna in his absence.

When confronted with this choice, Simba runs into the dark night and cries out to his dad, saying things like, “You said you’d always be there for me, but you’re not! It’s because of me. It’s all my fault!”

At this point in the movie, Mufasa shows up as a lion-shaped star formation in the sky and tells Simba, “remember who you are.” Simba was royalty, and it didn’t matter how long he spent living unmoored in the jungle trying to forget. Acting like something else didn’t change the fact that Simba was the rightful heir to the throne.

Now take the leap with me from animated lions to the New Testament: in Matthew 5, Jesus tells a group of people to essentially remember who they are. They ARE salt and they ARE light – not they should act like salt and behave like light. Salt cannot be anything but salty, and light can’t do anything but illuminate. They’re salty and bright, because that’s what they ARE!

We are salty and bright, too, made to improve the places we live and the people we do life with. We are Made on Purpose for a Purpose, and Jesus’ words are there to remind us of that, especially when we forget. 

Simba wasn’t told to practice acting like a king before going back to the savanna. His dad, the king, knew who he was, and Jesus, the King, knows who we are. Let “Simba and Salt” help you remember who YOU are today!