3.235 Still

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.

How's your songs of praise and your poetry going this week? How's your study of Psalms? I hope you're enjoying it as we've been reading Psalms 1 through basically 46 selective chapters throughout.

Or I guess selective Psalms would be the correct terminology there. We're going to start out our episode today with a quick activity. Did you think you lost me?

Where did your mind go inside of that tiny 30 seconds? We'd never gone completely dead and silent on Savory Salt for a whole 30 seconds before. What happened?

Did you think that perhaps the podcast episode was dead and gone? Maybe Allen uploaded it incorrectly. Maybe Hope edited it wrong.

What happened when your mind had a moment of silence and stillness? That takes us to our verse for today, which is found inside of Psalm 46. We did a massive leapfrog, as I warned might happen.

But in Psalm 46, we have an awesome, awesome declaration here about God being our refuge and our strength. Some incredible verses here, tough to pick one. And so really my thoughts kind of combine 1 and 10 together.

But we're going to use 10 as the verse for today. It's one that you may recognize from the Doctrine and Covenants days as well, for those of you that have been listening that long. Verse 10 says this: "Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth." How many of us take the Lord up on that front end offer there?

And is it really an offer? Is it a commandment? It's tough to see, right?

And it's certainly tough in times of our challenging struggles and daily ups and downs to realize and to pause. I know that for me, I run from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. Even inside our visitations to the temple sometimes, it feels like we just sat down and now it's time to go to the next thing.

And then we just sat down, now we've got to go to the baptismal font as we go with the girls and then we go change. Okay, now we're ready for confirmations. And it's nothing that the temple workers are doing by any means.

It just seems like sometimes, even inside the temple, the opportunity to be still is lacking for my own. This is totally on me here. So, my friends, go back to the Lord's counsel: "Be still, and know that I am God." I'm getting to a point in my life where I look at the world, I look at news, I look at politics, I look at religion, I look at job, I look at activities, I look at my education, I look at my family life, and I go, "You know what?

I'm starting to realize that being still may be the only option in my life." I can do it all? You can do it all? Even though I try repeatedly to do it all, the Lord instead counsels us to be still.

Know that He's here, and if we can connect that little bit of verse 1 as well: "He is a very present help in trouble." I know that God lives. I know that He's aware of me, my struggles, my challenges, my ups, my downs, and that He is present for me. I know that He's there for you as well.

I know that our job is to seek Him, and He will come. 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.