The Laundromat on Cypress Avenue

For eleven years, Maria Gutierrez ran a laundromat in East Oakland that should have gone under twice. The margins were razor-thin. A bigger chain opened three blocks away with newer machines and lower prices. Her accountant told her to sell.

But Maria had turned that laundromat into something the chain could never replicate. She kept a shelf of children's books by the dryers. She taped job listings to the bulletin board every Monday and helped customers fill out applications while their clothes tumbled. When the elderly Vietnamese woman from apartment 4B couldn't carry her basket anymore, Maria started picking it up on Thursdays. She learned enough Vietnamese to say "Your clothes are ready, Mrs. Phan."

Nobody wrote articles about Maria. No one gave her an award. She simply refused to reduce her business to a transaction. She seasoned that block with something the neighborhood could taste — dignity, presence, attention.

When Jesus told His followers they were the salt of the earth and the light of the world, He wasn't calling them to spectacular acts. He was describing what they already were. Salt doesn't announce itself. A lamp doesn't applaud its own brightness. They simply do what they were made to do — preserve, flavor, illuminate — right where they've been placed.

The Almighty doesn't ask us to be the whole ocean. He asks us not to lose our saltiness on the street where we already stand.