3.222 There was a Man in the Land of Uz

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 this day whom you will serve.

Is everybody ready for a good poem? I can't say that poetry is my expertise, actually. We are going to transition into some poetry for a good chunk of reading inside the Old Testament here.

The Book of Genesis, or I should say the books of Genesis all the way to Esther are a little bit more historical based, a little bit more story character driven. And now we transition into what's still a story as we get into the Book of Job here, but is really more told in poetic ways. So as we go through this, I hope that especially with this reading, this is a massive reading by all accounts.

Job 1–3, 12–14, 19, 21–24, 38–40, and chapter 42. Otherwise known as, let's just call it the Book of Job this week. Fair enough, friends.

Reading poetry several thousand years old. So if you have a poetic ear, congratulations! If you do not, welcome to my world.

As we dive into Savory Salt, I'm going to do the best that I can here inside of this, but also just being mindful of the poetry, I also kind of feel a little bit of freedom to be able to just take these verses independently rather than worrying about the poetry. Job 1, verse 1 is where we're kicking off. I think it's an appropriate place to start because of the context it does give us.

As I just talked about reading things out of context a little bit. Job 1, verse 1, says this: "There was a man in the land of Uz." Uz? Which one do you prefer?

Let's go with Uz. Whose name was Job. "And that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil." Now we've had these types of intros to people in the past here with the Old Testament. We see here, and you can go through, read all of these footnotes here inside of here.

You can follow along inside of the kind of the cutout pieces of Come Follow Me. Read those, spend some time there. But you get the general introduction here that Job is a good guy.

He's a great guy. He is doing all the things that the Lord would consider to be an upright individual. And yet we know what's coming with the story of Job.

He's going to lose everything in this faith challenge. My friends, the message that I kind of hold on to this is part of mortality, part of the deal of mortality is that tough things are going to happen. Whether it's to good people, to average people, to people that are trying to do their best, trying to do their worst, tough things are going to happen.

We are going to see in Job's story is the repetitive nature to not forget God in the tough times. This is such a vital one for me. I can remember a very difficult time on my mission when I wrote a letter home to my dad.

Oh, I wasn't prepared to kind of share this story. I'm trying to be careful here as I share this. I wrote a letter home to my dad.

I was feeling very frustrated. I was feeling like I was losing everything on my mission. I lost my focus.

I felt like I was losing relationships. It was just a very difficult time. And I remember in that letter writing to my dad and saying, "Am I just some other version of Job here?

Am I getting some Job challenge here?" And I was just kind of complaining to him and just unloading inside of a letter. Now, the interesting thing you need to know is that at that time in Mongolia, it took a solid six weeks, eight weeks or so, for letters to go and come back to over to the United States and then come back. So it was quite some time before I heard back from my dad.

And, you know, my dad's response today still just holds true. I guess it's—there's some just eternal responses from from fathers that are worth it. He wrote the same thing to me back that President Hinckley received from his dad when he was having a difficult time on his mission.

He said, "Son, I understand you're experiencing difficult times." Just remember, President Hinckley received counsel from his father. Thank you for watching. Thank you for joining us today.

We hope you are here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt.