Day 22 The Law of Polarity: Light or Darkness

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are the salt of the earth, and in the same sentence offers a warning that savorless salt is good for nothing. Join me in an attempt to be savory salt as I share each day one verse of scripture and one small thought. Perhaps this small daily emphasis can lead to greater savor in your life and ultimately you and I can be savory salt.

Hello, my friends and family, wherever you're listening from. Thank you for joining me and know that I am cheering for your every success. Welcome to day 22 on our 365-day journey to read the Book of Mormon a little bit each day.

I'm excited to have you join today. We are going to dive into 1 Nephi chapter 14, verses 1 through 11. I'm going to be kind of short on the verses side of things, but a little bit lengthy in the size of the verses.

And this one we're going to go from Nephi's vision of the past here, at least in terms of our timeline, into a bit of Nephi's vision of some of our future. There may be some things in chapter 14 that we haven't even seen or experienced yet, and so we can't attach them to historical events like we can in chapter 13. But I wanted to dive into verse 7 here for just a second and just share a quick thought.

Verse 7 says, "...and the Lord will lead to destruction, both temporally and spiritually, according to the captivity of the devil, of which I have spoken." Wow, that one's a big one! It's kind of meaty inside of there. But it's really interesting.

It actually boils down to a concept called the law of polarity. The law of polarity says that there's basically two sides to every coin. There's light and darkness.

There's good and evil. And inside of this, the Lord is letting us know that this work is going to lead down to quite simply two sides. There's going to be peace and life eternal, or there's going to be this ultimate captivity and destruction.

And you know, I thought about this the way that it was worded. I think it was worded kind of personally for Nephi because he sees here where that, either the convincing of them unto peace and life eternal, or into the deliverance of them to the hardness of their hearts. Nephi, unfortunately, is kind of experiencing this with his brothers.

And yet he's watching them choose to go into the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds because they don't understand the workings of God. And I think it's like that in our lives sometimes. I think we want to make some of our decisions sometimes, these big convoluted decisions.

And really, it kind of comes down to two things to consider. Is this going to draw me closer to the light? Ultimately, will this draw me closer to the Lord Jesus Christ?

Or does it pull me away? Does it perhaps face me in the direction of the darkness? Now I know that there are a lot of life choices that don't appear to be that drastic or that dramatic in our lives.

And yet at the same time, is it really more complicated than that? Can we make decisions in our lives based on those things that draw us to the light? Things like serving others, giving to others, giving to ourselves, things that are uplifting and spiritual in nature, spending time in meditation that draws us closer to the Lord.

Or are there activities in our lives that we could draw in that perhaps bring darkness? Perhaps the words we listen to inside of podcasts, or perhaps the voices we listen to inside of music choices or movie industry, whatever it may be, are they drawing us towards the light and life of Jesus Christ? Or are they drawing us towards darkness in the opposite direction?

I think it's worth considering here, and Nephi certainly in chapter 14 draws this parallel of the law of polarity quite drastically. He's going to get to the point of just saying, "Look, there's one side and then there's the other side." And I think that that's worth digging into for each one of us personally. That's all I have for today, my friends.

Remember that by small and simple things great things are brought to pass. Keep it small, keep it simple, and always seek to be savory salt. I'll be here tomorrow. I hope you are too.