The Enterprise

To be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world” is the Christian enterprise. In a beautiful little book called “The Pearl is in the Oyster,” the author tells the story of how one woman worked out a way to remind herself of this reality. She says,

My grandmother had two irons. One was shiny and new with an electric cord that encircled it like a soft cat’s tail. The other was never used, but it sat on the shelf anyway, right between the Holy Bible and a red geranium plant, which bloomed all year long. It was shaped like a small, cast-iron boat with points at both ends, and it had a wooden handle which could be carefully removed in the days when irons were heated on large black stoves … Its most remarkable characteristic was rust …

The rust was like a thin coating of reddish brown icing on a boat-shaped cake. Even the label was encrusted enough…