Day 329 Christ Our Shepherd, God Our Leader

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'm cheering for your every success. Welcome to day 329 on our 365 day journey through the Book of Mormon together.

Today, we're going to be reading Mormon chapter 5, verses 9 through 24. And I hope inside of this that we get an interesting look. I don't pretend to be a gospel or scriptural scholar.

I am a person that tries to read my scriptures every day and tries to learn from them every day. And inside of Mormon chapter 5, I may or may not have come across a bit of chiastic poetry here. And so I wanted to share it with you as it appears to be to me.

Fair enough. Now chiasmus is an interesting type of writing. It's like a reflective writing.

So you have one verse over here that says something, and then a verse later on that alludes to it as well. And then it's like A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D, E, E, F, F. And what happens is these verses mirror each other.

So a message gets up to a single point and then the message comes down to a single point, reiterating the previous messages. Let me just kind of get there and show you what I'm looking at for our verse for today. I think the chiasmus comes in verses 14 through 20 inside of Mormon chapter 5.

And just to illustrate a little bit of what I mean by these AABB, in 14 and 20, we both have this illustration of the fulfilling of God's covenant. This kind of restoration with Abraham and Israel. In 15 and 19, as we get a little bit closer to the main idea, we get this idea that the people are scattered because of their own unbeliefs and whatnot, and thus their blessings are given to others.

And so we have kind of a parallel there as well. And then you get verses 16 and 18, and that's basically what it looks like to have life without God. They are driven forth as chaff, and they are also like a rudderless ship.

And so we have kind of this parallel there, which would then take us to the verse for today, or what would be the main point of this little chiasmic poem here. And that is verse 17. So Mormon chapter five, verse 17 is our verse for today.

It says, "They were once a delightsome people, and they had Christ for their shepherd. Yea, they were led even by God the Father." Now there's three components in this that I absolutely love in this small verse. Delightsome people is the first one.

Now he's writing it as it was the past, and we know that it is, right? They certainly aren't delightsome right now based on our readings the last couple of chapters. And yet what made them delightsome was the other two components of this verse.

They had Jesus Christ as their shepherd, which means they followed him, and they were led by God the Father. And so they had these two incredible beings, God the Father and Jesus Christ leading them, which led them to be delightsome people. I don't know if I stumbled over this.

I didn't have any notes in here that I read this from some seminary class or whatever. I don't try to pretend that I've discovered some chiasmus that hasn't been. I want to share this with the group and see if 17 maybe is a major point for us to focus in on.

When it comes to restoration of the gospel, when it comes to keeping our covenants, when it comes to understanding what life would be like without Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in it, as we see through 16 and 18, we land then on the conclusion that life is quite delightsome when we have Jesus Christ as our shepherd and God the Father as our leader. I know that I find greater joy in my life when I align myself closer to their principles, to their teachings, and hold myself to a greater level of accountability for the covenants that I have made with them in my life. I hope you can find that alignment in your life as well.

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