Abide With Me

My entries on this blog are things that I have learned about during that particular week in my Book of Mormon class.  In this week's lesson there was a video shown with the hymn, "Abide With Me", playing.  It is one of my favorite hymns.  The main idea of the video was that these days the world is full of turmoil and strife.  Everyday you can turn on the news and see someone that has been or is going through some trial.  It seems as if the world is in distress and yet where are we to turn for help and aid?

I have noticed that when times become hard or overwhelming that people do two things.  Either they become hard and numb to all feeling or they turn to God or what they consider to be a higher power.  I choose to turn to God and seek his comfort and guidance.  The hymn, "Abide With Me" brings me great comfort when things become difficult for me.  

The first verse is:  
Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens. Lord, with me abide!
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me!

When you look up "abide" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary one of the definitions is, " to remain or continue".  I replaced "abide" with "remain" in the first verse and so it would go:

Remain with me! fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens. Lord, with me remain!
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, remain with me!

It brought to mind the times in my life that I needed someone to be with me. I did not even need them to say anything, just to stay or remain with me so that I was not alone.  I know that there is a God and that He is my Heavenly Father.  As a good parent should, He has remained with me in times that just seemed too hard to get through alone.  

This blog entry is short and sweet, but I just wanted to let whoever reads this to know that there is a God.  He is the one to turn to in both good times and bad. A prayer that I have can not be phrased better than in the last line of the third verse in "Abide With Me":

Thru cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me!

"Abide With Me"
Text: Henry F. Lyte, 1793-1847
Music: William H. Monk, 1823-1889

Picture from www.lds.org