3.077 God Did Send Me...To Preserve Life

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends, it's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve. You ever had that thought: Why would God allow this to happen to me?

Or what do I do about this because this awful thing has occurred? My friends, we have much to learn from our reading this week inside of Genesis chapters 42 through 50, especially in the context of moving forward after difficult things have happened to us in our lives. One of the areas that people tend to get caught up on is when awful things happen to them, they think: How could God let this happen?

Or if there is a God, why would these things happen across the earth to these people? Let's get started. We have here on the earth.

That agency includes choices that are awful and bad and can hurt other people. He will not remove that agency. And so, as people use their agency in negative ways, bad things happen.

But then we get into the context of our verse for today. This moment that's been building for 20 plus years. As Joseph sees his brothers repeatedly through these.

In one of the early chapters, he cries on his own. I wonder what thoughts were going through his mind as he thought about the terrible experiences he had had over those 20 years directly as a result of the choices of his brothers. And then we see this moment here.

Genesis 45, verse 5 is our verse for today and it says this. Joseph, talking to his brothers, says, "Now therefore be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life." Now in that context it makes it seem a little bit like God encouraged the brothers to sell Joseph in order for this to happen. And I love the related content piece here inside of the Gospel Library app to help us see that the context here is not that Joseph feels like the Lord encouraged his brothers to sell him into slavery.

Rather, the perspective is that Joseph acknowledges that God, through these bad decisions, was able to turn things for good. And it quotes inside of here Elder Neal A. Maxwell saying, "The evil intent of Joseph's brothers was folded into the plans of God, who knows the beginning from the end and all that is in between." My friends, bad things happen to us, but it doesn't stop the Lord from being able to turn all things for our good.

And the phrase that I love inside of today's verse is: "God did send me before you to preserve life." What an interesting shift it would be for all of us in our moments of these horrible things happening to us. Whatever it may be—betrayal, dishonesty, false accusations, whatever it may be—wouldn't it be interesting for us to take the perspective that "God did send me before you to preserve life"? A few days ago, I talked about some of my experiences with my uncle that moved in and lived with me for a while when I was in high school.

I want to return to his story just a little bit and share another little perspective that helped me as a teenager and really gave me an interesting perspective. I think it deals specifically with this idea of preserving life. One of my uncle's favorite things to do while living with us was to go to his AA meetings.

And instead, turned them into the possibility of preserving life by helping others who are going through the same difficult circumstances. My friends, how many of us could turn to others after our difficult circumstances and seek to preserve life for those going through similar challenging times in their lives? I hope that you and I can take our darkest parts of our lives and turn them through the power of God to the ability of preserving life and helping to uplift others going through their difficult times of life as well.

That's all for today, my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.