2.341 He Did Thank and Praise the Lord All the Day Long

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. If I were to ask you if you've ever lived through a hurricane, would your question back to me be literal or figurative?

Let's talk about hurricanes today a little bit. We're reading this week Doctrine and Covenants sections 137 through 138, as well as Ether chapters 3 through 7. The Book of Ether is fascinating because we get the We're having this cool conversation with Moroni in the middle of also getting the story of the Jaredite civilization.

Moroni tends to pause, talk to us a little bit as if we're there, and then go back into the story. The journey of the Jaredites coming to the promised land that the Lord has promised them. Their journey, the boats, the stones that are going to light the way, we get a pretty descriptive version here of what it takes for them to come across these waters.

They are tossed to and fro. The winds are blowing. It's crazy.

We're saved from, like, monsters in the sea, and the whales can get them and harm them, right? I mean, there's some, it's really an interesting read. And then we find out that they're driven forth for 344 days.

So this is a year of tempest winds tossing because we read in here that the winds never stopped. They kept going. And it really got me thinking about hurricanes in real life first, and then maybe the figurative hurricanes in just a second.

When we lived in Houston, Texas, I've talked about this before a little bit. We had just moved there when Hurricane Katrina went through New Orleans in 2005. And then we were also present when Hurricane Rita, just a few months later, came up through Beaumont and went through that experience.

And then we also experienced Hurricane Ike and a few other scenarios there. Hurricane Ike was the one that for us basically went through our backyard, took down our fence, took down some trees, was quite an experience. We lost power, did all the things, right?

And the story here that the Jaredites are experiencing has me really thinking about not just the real hurricanes. In Hurricane Ike, the wind, I can't even explain it. We talk about howling wind.

It was like screeching. It was high pitched and it went all through the night. And I can remember looking out the front window and our tree was blowing back and forth so hard that the branches were touching the grass as it whipped back and forth.

Just an amazing experience. The cleanup of hurricanes was crazy to see what destruction had happened. And so as I read this experience of the Jaredites, I'm picturing my own experience of winds blowing as they're describing it here.

These waves and billowing winds, right? It's quite an experience. And then we get the verse for today and it's inside of Ether chapter 6 verse 9.

Ether chapter 6 verse 9. This is what the Brother of Jared and his family are doing in the middle of the chaos. Verse 9, And they did sing praises unto the Lord.

Yea, the Brother of Jared did sing praises unto the Lord, and he did thank. The winds maybe you're experiencing that right now. Look at how the Brother of Jared and his family approached the situation.

They did sing praises unto the Lord. They sang praises. They did thank and praise the Lord all the day long, and they did not cease to praise the Lord when the night came.

My friends, the Lord has promised, we've talked about this in Savory Salt, the Lord has promised that all things shall be for our good. And if that's the case, that includes the winds, the tempests, the challenges, the billowing winds and waves. All those things can be for our good.

May we all sing praises unto the Lord, even through those difficult times, because even 344 days later, what was waiting for the Brother of Jared and his family was the promise of God. I believe promised land moments can come in our lives, both eternally and literally in our day-to-day lives as well, as we seek to praise the Lord for the blessings He's given us. That's all for today, my friends.

Lift up your hearts and rejoice. If you are going through a hurricane right now, thank the Lord and seek His blessings. Cleave into the covenants you have made and together we will be Savory Salt.