“Feast upon This Fruit”

The Fruit of the Tree of Life

Let’s look closely at how Alma describes the fruit of the tree that will grow in our hearts if we nourish the word. He describes it as most precious, sweet above all that is sweet, white above all that is white, and pure above all that is pure. Then we’ll be able to feast. You can feast until ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.

Now, Alma’s imagery strongly echoes Lehi’s vision of the tree of life, where he saw a white tree with fruit, a path, and an iron rod leading to it. Here’s how Lehi described the fruit of that tree, which he ate in his vision (1 Nephi 8:10–12). Lehi said the fruit was most sweet, above all that he had ever before tasted. He said it was white, to exceed all the whiteness that he had ever seen. You see these parallels? He said, “It filled my soul with exceedingly great joy.” And you see that parallel between feasting and having a soul filled.

Lehi said it was desirable to make one happy, and that it was desirable above all other fruit. After learning of his father’s vision, Nephi asked the Lord and was allowed to see the same tree as his father. He learned a bit more about what the various images in the vision represented. He tells us that the tree represents the love of God (1 Nephi 11:21–23), and he describes the fruit that comes from that tree as most precious, most desirable above all other fruits, and, finally, as the greatest of all the gifts of God (1 Nephi 15:36). That’s what Nephi said about it.

Doesn’t that sound wonderful? I want that fruit. So how do we grow the tree in our hearts so that it will give us that fruit? Or how do we find our way to the tree that Lehi saw, so that we can partake of the fruit that’s growing there?

Planting and Nourishing the Word

Alma told us how. We have to plant the word in our hearts. So what is the word? This is what Alma tells us it is: “Begin to believe in the Son of God, that he will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins, and that he shall rise again from the dead, which shall bring to pass the resurrection, that all men shall stand before him to be judged according to their works.” (Alma 33:22)

So how do we plant that seed? How do we—or, I should say, how do we nourish it? That’s how we plant it. That is the seed. We plant it in our hearts, but how do we nourish it?

Alma and Nephi both teach us in different parts of the Book of Mormon. They talk about how we need to hold fast to the word of God. That’s the scriptures, right, and the teachings of living prophets (1 Nephi 15:23–24). We need to pray always, give thanks in our prayers, and keep His commandments (Alma 34:17–27, 38–39). We need to be working to obey the word of God. We need to be humble, trying to cultivate humility in ourselves, and turn to Christ in repentance (Alma 32:13–16).

Notice how all these things are actions that we need to take. They require choice and initiative. We’re not meant to just plant the seed and then forget about it. If we nourish the tree by doing these things, then we will be filled with joy, feasting upon the love of God.

When Discipleship Feels Like It Isn’t Working

I learned as a youth the importance of scripture study, prayer, and obeying the commandments. I’ve tried to do those things since my teen years—reading at least a little bit of scripture every day, praying morning and night, going to church, keeping a current temple recommend, and attending regularly. But there was a point some years ago when I began to get quite discouraged about it all.

It felt like it wasn’t working. Let me tell you a little bit about that time in my life. Tim and I have four kids, all born during my PhD program, including twins who arrived three days after my dissertation defense. Life was busy. When I joined the faculty at BYU, these kids were eight, six, four, and four years old.

As they grew up, they were involved in football and basketball, soccer, and ballet. We were not only trying to keep them fed and dressed, which in itself requires a Herculean effort; we were also trying to help them be successful in school, read scriptures with them, hold family home evenings with them, and do special one-on-one times with them. At the same time, I was trying to establish myself as a professor at BYU.

I was working really hard to measure up in terms of publications, getting NIH grants, becoming a good teacher, and mentoring the students in my research lab. Tim also had a lot going on in his professional life. We were trying very hard to support each other and nurture our kids, but we were stretched very, very thin. Even though life was super busy, I was still committed to nourishing that seed in my heart, doing all the things we talked about here.

We went to church every Sunday, accepted callings, read scriptures, prayed, and got to the temple whenever we could. I was trying to do all those good things that we’re supposed to do, and I began to wonder why I wasn’t filled with joy.

Where’s the joy? It felt like it wasn’t working. I started to wonder, Why am I even trying so hard if it’s not working? I could think of only two possible explanations for why it might not be working.

Possibility one: the promise wasn’t true. Maybe it wasn’t—maybe Alma’s experiment didn’t actually work. But I couldn’t accept that explanation because I believe Alma, and I believe the Book of Mormon, and I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That left possibility two: the problem was me. Maybe I wasn’t reading the scriptures deeply enough. Maybe my prayers weren’t long enough or sincere enough. Maybe I wasn’t attending the temple often enough. Maybe I was doing the right things but not doing any of them well enough.

The thing is, I really was doing the best that I could at that time. My scripture study consisted of reading a few verses on the bathroom floor each morning because that was literally the only time and place when I could get it done.

I was praying morning and night, but I was collapsing with exhaustion by the end of most days, and I really didn’t think I could spend any more time on my knees without just falling asleep.

My temple attendance was regular, but it wasn’t very frequent. Again, I couldn’t see any realistic way to do it better. So that left me in a pretty bad place. If I’m doing the best I can and my best isn’t good enough, I’m just out of luck.

I had somehow begun thinking of that fruit as something that I had to earn by performing discipleship well enough. If my best wasn’t good enough, then maybe I would never get there. That was a really dark place to be.

But then one day, while reading the scriptures in my attempt to fit it in as best I could, I read Alma, chapter 32, verses 41 through 43, and I saw something I’d never really registered before.

This lifted my heart dramatically, and it has sustained me ever since. Look at this (Alma 32:41–43):

“But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.

“And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst.

“Then, my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you.”

Waiting Is Part of the Experiment

This scripture came to me with the force of pure revelation. I’m okay. I’m normal. I’m just fine. There’s nothing wrong with me. The waiting, the effort, and the need for patience were not evidence that the experiment had failed. They were part of the experiment. Waiting was part of the experiment. My efforts were working. I just needed to keep nourishing the seed.

Seeing this metaphor through new eyes, I noticed some other things I’d missed before. Notice when in the process Alma tells us to exercise faith (Alma 32:27–36).

Here’s the process that he maps out: We plant the seed, it swells, it sprouts, it grows, we get a tree, the fruit comes, and we feast on it. I think I had unconsciously assumed that faith was mostly required at the beginning, in that planting-the-seed space. In fact, I used to think that faith itself was the seed in this metaphor: Plant the seed of faith, nourish it, and watch it grow and produce fruit.

But that is not what Alma said. Faith is not the seed. The word about Jesus Christ is the seed. That’s what we have to plant in our hearts. So again, I just want to read it again. This is what we have to plant: “Begin to believe in the Son of God, that he will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins, and that he shall rise again from the dead, which shall bring to pass the resurrection, that all men shall stand before him to be judged according to their works.” (Alma 33:22)

Alma taught that it requires faith to plant the word of Christ in our hearts and not cast it out by our unbelief. So that is right at the beginning. Once that seed is safely planted in the good soil of your heart, that seed will swell and sprout and begin to grow.

Maybe you’ve sprouted a bean or another kind of seed before. It gets puffy, and then it splits open around the side, and a tiny little shoot comes out of that split. All this happens underground in the soil. That shoot grows, and when it reaches the point that you can see a little green shoot emerging from the soil—that middle point in this process—that’s when you have your first answer. That’s when you know the seed is good. You know that this information about Jesus Christ that you planted in your heart is good. That is a critical piece of information, but it is nowhere near the end of the process (Alma 32:30–36).

Alma makes a deliberate point of telling us that it’s not the end. In fact, that’s when Alma says our real work starts, in this part here where the tree begins to grow. That’s when we must focus on nourishing the very young tree with great diligence by doing these things: reading scriptures, praying, trying to be obedient, keeping the commandments, cultivating humility, and repenting.

This is the part where patience is needed because we have to wait for the fruit. Alma even goes so far as to call it long-suffering, and that is not a term that’s used for something that happens quickly.

What a relief it was for me to realize that if God is asking me to demonstrate patience, diligence, and long-suffering, then He’s expecting it to take time. That’s part of it.

Looking back at this now, the metaphor of a tree makes so much sense. Think about planting a fruit tree. It is not like growing zucchini.

You can do everything right with the tree and still not have fruit immediately. You can water it and fertilize it and give it sunlight. For a long time, the only visible evidence that anything is happening may be a tiny shoot. Eventually, you get a sapling and a few branches. But the absence of fruit today does not mean the tree isn’t growing. It always takes time for a tree to thicken and become sturdy enough to produce fruit.

This little bit of personal revelation while reading the scriptures made all the difference for me. Once I realized that waiting is part of the experiment, I no longer felt tempted to give up, and I had a new sense that my humble efforts were acceptable to God.

Recognizing the Fruit

There was another thing that I gradually came to understand. Not only had I misunderstood how long the precious fruit might take to grow, but I wasn’t always very good at recognizing the fruit when it came. I think I expected spiritual fruit to be dramatic. I expected the joy to feel overwhelming. I expected revelation to be unmistakable. Maybe I expected spiritual experiences to look like the spiritual experiences I had heard other people describe.

But increasingly, I’ve found that God’s interactions with me are usually quiet. A thought comes into my mind. A scripture suddenly has meaning that I’d never noticed before. I feel nudged toward a particular course of action, or something that has been confusing becomes clear. Peace replaces anxiety. I’ve begun to wonder how much fruit I actually did taste earlier in my life without realizing what I was tasting.

Personal Revelation and the Love of God

I’ve come to understand that one of the ways I most powerfully experience that fruit—that fruit that represents God’s love for me—is when I receive personal revelation and answers to prayers. Even if it’s about a small thing, receiving guidance by way of personal revelation or receiving an answer to prayer tells me God knows me. He loves me, and He cares about me.

That’s when I feel His love. It’s really quite remarkable that even when there are billions of people on this planet, most facing challenges, suffering, and disasters far worse than anything I’ll ever experience, somehow God is still aware of me. He cares about me. He’s with me on this mortal journey, and He loves me enough to send me a bit of help now and then.

I think that’s what the most precious fruit is about. It’s when we get to feel God’s love for us. There’s nothing that helps me feel it more than receiving a bit of personal revelation, like I did when I learned from Alma that waiting is part of the experiment. Let me give you a few other examples.

An Answer about Hives

I’m not allergic to anything that I know of, but a few years ago I randomly broke out in hives. All over my body. They were driving me absolutely crazy. Nothing seemed to help. After about a week of discomfort, I was saying my bedtime prayers and decided to ask in my prayer for help getting rid of the hives.

Immediately, a picture of this green bar of soap I had bought the week before came into my mind. First, I dismissed it because it was a super-clean, ultranatural, expensive brand I bought at a Whole Foods store. So it couldn’t be that. But then I stopped myself. That picture had come into my head at the exact moment that I was praying for help getting rid of the hives.

So I decided to show some faith and try it out. I took that bar of soap out of the shower and put it in the garbage. Within two days, the hives were all gone. That picture in my mind really was an immediate answer to prayer. The fact that God answered my prayer about that tiny little thing tells me He knows me and He’s aware of me. That means so much.

A Professional Assignment

The second example is more consequential. Almost ten years ago, I received an assignment that I felt unqualified for. It was a professional assignment, and I was overwhelmed by a persistent fear of failure and a sense of inadequacy.

Maybe some of you have felt that way. The stress associated with my fear of failing in this important new assignment was taking a heavy toll on me. I finally turned to God in prayer, asking, “What do I need to do so that you can help lift these feelings of inadequacy and fear?” While I was still on my knees, two things that I needed to do came into my mind.

One was that I needed to take care of my physical health by making time every day for exercise. The second was that I needed to take care of my spiritual health by going to the temple every single week.

I remember being there on my knees and immediately starting to wonder, Wait a minute. Is that real revelation? Those are good things to do, but what in the world could they possibly have to do with my fear of failure and helping me resolve that?

But I had just asked a very specific question, and I had just received two very specific thoughts in my mind. They were unexpected thoughts. What more was I waiting for? So I committed then and there to do those two things. I began devoting time to my physical health daily, and I began attending the temple once a week.

This, by the way, was after my kids were grown, and I really could do those things. They were possible.

Within just a few weeks, I did indeed notice a difference in my level of confidence toward my work. The fear of failure was further away, and that sense of impending doom seemed to dissipate. I felt like I could adequately and even confidently complete the assigned work.

I also found that on the rare occasions when I missed a weekly temple visit, my work-related stress would begin rising toward unhealthy levels again, and my confidence would decline until I made it back to the temple the following week for a reset.

I asked God for help, and He sent me ideas that actually worked. He guided me through a substantial life challenge. Again, receiving this revelation was like tasting the precious fruit of God’s miraculous love. He heard my prayers, and He cared enough about me to send me help.

A Child’s Agency

My third and final example is the most consequential. A couple of years ago, I was preparing to travel to another state to visit one of our adult children with whom we’d had some tension and estrangement. The surrounding circumstances were the most painful thing I have ever faced in this life. Now I had the chance for a face-to-face conversation with that beloved child. I was so worried. I was praying desperately for help.

A day or two before leaving, I went to the temple and spent the entire endowment session praying in my mind about what I should say, what I should not say, how to approach the whole thing just right, and how not to foul it up. I caught almost nothing of the instruction that was being presented except for a short moment of clarity near the beginning, when I heard the part about how Satan was cast down because he sought to destroy the agency of man.

Nothing else even registered because I was so in my head about how to make my visit successful—or at least avoid disaster. I arrived for my visit in the evening and stayed in a hotel, still feeling very stressed and fearful.

The next morning, I was ready to go with time to spare. I decided to read my scriptures, but I didn’t want to just read the next chapter I was on in the Book of Mormon. I wanted something specifically relevant to help me that day.

So I asked God to guide me to a scripture. The one that came into my mind was Moses, chapter 4 (Moses 4:3). I turned to it, not knowing what it was about. It turns out it’s the one that describes Satan being cast down because he sought to destroy the agency of man.

It felt familiar to me, but it actually took me a couple of minutes before I realized why. That was the one and only part of the temple session that I had heard clearly a couple of days before.

And then it hit me: God sent me this revelation twice.

I missed it the first time because I was so caught up in my own head. But in His kind, generous patience, He sent it again.

Suddenly, I understood: My child has agency, and that agency is a precious gift from God. I didn’t need to find exactly the right words that would produce exactly the outcome I wanted. My job wasn’t to control the outcome. My job was to honor my child’s agency and give love. That was it.

When I realized what a precious and valuable revelation this was, I can’t tell you how full my heart felt. The metaphor of feasting on sweet, pure fruit felt so apt. My soul was filled with exceedingly great joy because I felt God’s love so profoundly.

Something else about that experience is important to note. God didn’t promise me that the visit would turn out exactly as I hoped. He didn’t take away my child’s agency. He didn’t remove the painful circumstances that had caused me to pray so desperately.

The fruit wasn’t that God had fixed everything. The fruit was that He gave me light and love. He helped me understand something that I hadn’t understood. He showed me how to love better, and in receiving that guidance, I felt profoundly loved myself.

What the Scriptures Promise

I think that’s important because Alma doesn’t promise that faithful people will have easy lives. Lehi’s family certainly didn’t. Alma didn’t. Amulek didn’t. What these scriptures promise is something different: that the word can grow within us until it produces a fruit that is most precious, sweet above all that is sweet, and pure above all that is pure (Alma 32:41–43), even while mortal life remains difficult.

We may not experience that fruit constantly, and there may be seasons when it seems very far away. But over a lifetime of nourishing faith in Christ, I believe we are given tastes of it—sometimes dramatic, but much more often quiet and easily missed.

Over the last couple of decades, I’ve tried to pay closer attention so that I recognize these kinds of experiences for what they are. The more carefully I look, the more I recognize the quiet ways that God has been teaching me, guiding me, answering me, and reminding me that He knows me and loves me.

I think this is the fruit that Alma was describing. We plant the word about Jesus Christ. We nourish it through scripture study, prayer, repentance, covenants, and worship. Then we keep nourishing it with faith, diligence, patience, and long-suffering (Alma 33:22–23).

Those words are really important. Patience and long-suffering mean that we should not be surprised when the fruit takes time. The waiting is part of the experiment. But the fruit does come.

We taste it when God speaks peace to us, when a scripture suddenly seems written just for us, when an answer comes to a prayer, and when we receive just enough light to know what to do next. We taste it when, for a moment, we recognize that the God of the universe knows exactly where we are and what we need.

When those moments come, I hope we will notice them because I believe we experience that exquisite, precious, joy-giving fruit Alma described when we feel the love of God, when we recognize His voice and His hand in our lives. We taste that fruit.

That is one of the great wonders that scripture has brought into my life. Through the word of God, I’ve learned to recognize the love of God.

I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.