3.100 Our Memories Can Anchor Us in Christ

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.

Grab a really strong memory. It should come to you instantly if it's strong. Emotionally, could be positive or negative.

But as you latched onto that memory, what's happening right now as you're thinking about it? I want you to hold onto that as we get into our readings today. We are in our hundredth day of this season, so congratulations for sticking with us.

For those of us—for those of you, I should say—that are joining on a daily basis, all of our new ones that are joining, welcome wherever you are in the world listening. I am excited that you're jumping on here. I'm excited that you are doing your best every day to be the best version of yourself.

And I hope that you know that as I lean into these episodes, I'm going to be able to. I am thinking about who you are. I don't know who you are, most of you.

I don't know your circumstances, but I certainly pray for you and pray that I may be able to just share my testimony of the things that I'm reading and that those thoughts and prayers may be able to affect you in your life. So wherever you are, thank you for joining today. We are reading this week Exodus chapter 7 through 13.

And inside of this, we're going to shift now from the plagues and the hard-heartedness into the Passover. And we get a key verse inside of Exodus chapter 12 that I think is very important to the Hebrews and the Israelites as they're called to remember the Lord, but also what it means for us in our lives. Let's take a look at the verse and see what we can do for us today.

We're going to go to Exodus chapter 12, verse 14. I believe for me, this is kind of a call from the Lord of why they're going to do Passover. And it doesn't necessarily explain all the pieces that happened in the verses beforehand.

But verse 14 says this: Exodus 12:14. The Lord is referencing the Passover here. We know all of the symbolism.

I'm going to let you dive into the many different ways that the Passover symbolizes Jesus Christ and His Atonement for us. So I'll let you go kind of investigate those. What I wanted to focus on in verse 14 here is the idea of a memorial.

This one fascinates me because it is attached to one of the most common words in Scripture and that is the Lord calling on His people to remember: Remember the Lord, remember to pray, remember your covenants, remember to repent. We get remember a lot. And here in 14 we get a command from the Lord that the Passover is going to be a memorial.

I wanted to dive in and understand more of that. And as I looked at the Bible, I found that it was a very important part of the Bible. The Hebrew word here for memorial—no surprise—the Hebrew root word would be to remember, but it's more than just a mental recall.

And that's something that I really liked with it. As I was studying it, memorial was going into the past and bringing the past back into the present. So go back to the beginning of this episode when I asked you to recall a strong memory in your life.

Did you just have a mental recall or did it bring back emotions, colors, smells, tastes, whatever the event was? Can you have that full experience back in the present here? That's what the Lord is asking the people of Israel here to do forever.

To remember that here's the day the Lord saved His people. My friends, we are called today to do the same thing in the ordinances that we fulfill through the Sacrament, through the covenants that we make in the Temple and throughout our lives. We are called to do these things that we may remember, meaning we may go back into the past and anchor that memory to Jesus Christ and our commitment to Him through ordinances, through covenants we keep, through our repentance process.

My friends, I hope that our memories, good and bad, can tie us directly to our Savior Jesus Christ. I think about some of the hardest memories that I have with both of my parents being gone. You know, I've talked about this.

You know that that's been a difficult time for me. But I also can go back into memories that are amazing with my parents. And I can go back into the covenants I've made with the Lord through my Temple covenants and remember that I have an opportunity to see my mom and dad again.

I have a chance to live with them as family. I am grateful for the power of memory in my life and the opportunity that we have to anchor those memories in Jesus Christ and His Atonement. May you and I do so on a regular basis is my hope today.

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.