2.307 Take Especial Care of Your Family

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. Welcome to a new week. We are reading this week Doctrine and Covenants sections 125–128.

Can you believe how far we are in the Doctrine and Covenants? This season, it just seems so much closer for one than the other. We are going to get inside of the Doctrine and Covenants this week, into a little bit more into the doctrine of baptisms for the dead.

But before we get there, we're going to first take a look at a very, very short section here that's actually directed to Brigham Young. But I had a verse inside of there that just got me kind of stewing and kind of thinking. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 126.

Brigham Young is commanded to not keep going forth and serving and instead be home with his family a little bit. He's still teaching the word and preaching, but not going out into foreign lands or whatever. And it says this in verse 3.

It says, "I therefore command you to send my word abroad, and take especial care of your family from this time, henceforth and forever. Amen." Now, what counsel can we take from that counsel that the Lord has given to Brigham Young? The first thing that I thought of and kind of reflected on was the idea that there are times in the Church where sometimes our callings take us away from our family for long periods of time, sometimes.

I mean, ultimately, like a mission, you're away from your family for, you know, 18 months or two years or something, maybe three years if you're a mission president or whatever. But I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about our work in our wards and our stakes, right?

Sometimes our callings can kind of be overwhelming to us. And yet this counsel here is really interesting to me because where I kind of landed in reflecting on times and seasons where I've been busier or my wife's been busier or my parents when I was younger, you know, those types of ideas. What I kind of landed on was this.

The gospel of Jesus Christ should make us better family members in every sense. If we are living the principles of the gospel, if we are following Jesus Christ, we would be more loving, we would be more humble, we would be more forgiving, we would have charity and seek to serve more. And then when you put that in a family context, that would be siblings to siblings, parents to children, aunts and uncles to nieces and nephews.

So let's look at this verse again and see if maybe through that context if that's a little bit of what you hear with Brigham Young here. "I therefore command you to send my word abroad, and take especial care of your family from this time, henceforth and forever." My friends, may you and I follow Jesus Christ and by so doing be better family members to all in our family. That's our message for today, and our hope is we get a little bit more savory inside of our own life of Savory Salt. That's all for today, my friends.

Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave into the covenants you have made, and together we will be Savory Salt. For more information, visit us at www.fema.org.