2.294 There is Peace in the Words of the Lord

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, a bold reminder that our lives are meant to carry His flavor, His truth, and His love to the world. Join me each day to explore one verse of scripture and one thought, striving to stay full of savor and truly live as savory salt. Hello my friends, it's great to have you with me.

Today let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. Exactly how long is a small moment? That may be going through many of your minds when you hear the response of the Lord from Joseph Smith's plea asking Him where He has gone.

We're reading this week Doctrine and Covenants sections 121 through 123 as well as 3 Nephi chapters 15 through 18. Yesterday we talked about the darkest moments of Joseph Smith and each one of us facing our darkest moments through our lives. Perhaps that happens now for you.

Perhaps you've had it in the past. It's got me thinking about difficult times and challenges that I've faced. And I want to share one of those with you after we get through our verse for today.

Doctrine and Covenants section 121, verse 7, is our verse. It is the response—at least the first response—from the Lord to Joseph Smith when Joseph has asked Him, "Where are you?" Verse 7 says: "My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment." Now, that's only the beginning of the sentence. It continues in the other verses; I'll let you read those.

But yesterday we talked from Brother Ted Callister's talk about ways that the Lord responds to our afflictions. One of those, the Lord does this in verse 7 when He says that, "Thine affliction shall be but a small moment." Now in the middle of that adversity, we very rarely see it as a small moment. I think of a time a number of years ago, I've talked about it a couple of times, I had a pretty serious back injury that left me right on the edge of not being able to walk at all.

I was quite paralyzed from the lower back down into my legs, especially my left leg. I didn't have the use of my left leg almost at all. It was basically kind of a pirate peg leg.

And I can remember specific times and days in the middle of that challenge when my family would go to church on Sunday and I was left in my room, in my bed, crying in my pillow. One of the only things I could do at that time was just listen to something. And I listened on repeat to Alma chapter 36.

Now that may sound like a weird place to just listen on repeat, but what I wanted to hear in Alma 36 on repeat was the experience of the joy that came through the Atonement of Jesus Christ in the life of Alma the Younger. I found some solace in listening to that over and over again in the middle of my adversity. And yet interestingly enough, while that pain did last for a very long time, months, the pain at the level of my ability to walk lasted only about a couple of weeks.

And in the moment, those weeks were eternal. But as I look back on it now, now that it's been a number of years later, it's really quite a small moment of time in my life. My friends, I'm not trying to discount or make you feel that your challenges are any less than they are.

We certainly can face difficult challenges in our lives. But this verse where the Lord says, first of all, "My son," what a great reminder from a Heavenly Father that we are His children. "Peace be unto thy soul." The Lord and His words can speak peace to us. They may not take away our pain, our sorrow.

They may not take away the adversity at all, but they can absolutely deliver peace to us. I'm grateful for the Lord's loving ability to invite peace into our souls and to give us an eternal perspective to realize that while it may be quite difficult that we're going through whatever it is we're going through right now, and it may be extending for days or weeks or months, in the grand scheme of the Lord's plan of salvation, the plan of happiness, it's an opportunity for us to know that those afflictions will be but small moments in our eternal existence. My friends, may you find peace to your souls as you turn to the Lord.

And may you understand that those adversities you're facing will be but small moments as we turn to the Lord. That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave to the covenants you have made and together we will be savory salt.