Stay forever

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the April 2004 Conference.

I have remembered this quote from Elder Holland ever since I heard it in 2004:

 “Abide in me” is an understandable and beautiful enough concept in the elegant English of the King James Bible, but “abide” is not a word we use much anymore. So I gained even more appreciation for this admonition from the Lord when I was introduced to the translation of this passage in another language. In Spanish that familiar phrase is rendered “permaneced en mi.” Like the English verb “abide,” permanecer means “to remain, to stay,” but even gringos like me can hear the root cognate there of “permanence.” The sense of this then is “stay—but stay forever.” That is the call of the gospel message to Chileans and everyone else in the world. Come, but come to remain. Come with conviction and endurance. Come permanently, for your sake and the sake of all the generations who must follow you, and we will help each other be strong to the very end.

I love the idea of being "permanently" attached to Jesus Christ. I was thinking this week about the Tree of Life and an article I read somewhere (?) about how trees were a female symbol in ancient cultures, and the "rod" in Lehi's dream could be seen as a sort of umbilical cord that can tie us back to the tree. I like the idea that when we are spiritually born of God, we can dwell within, be tied to, and be nourished by Jesus Christ as surely as an unborn baby dwells within, is tied to, and is nourished by its mother. Elder Holland uses a beautiful tree metaphor too:

For the fruit of the gospel to blossom and bless our lives, we must be firmly attached to Him, the Savior of us all, and to this His Church, which bears His holy name.

Other posts in this series:

"Earthly Debts, Heavenly Debts"—by Rozy