I Triumph Still if Thou Abide with Me - 4 January 2022

Have you ever felt like you are not succeeding or that you are failing to accomplish what you naturally should be able to?

To be honest, I felt a little like that in the past couple of days! Even though this is my eighth semester at BYU, it was perhaps my most uncoordinated and stressful start to a semester yet! I struggled to process everything I'm supposed to do, somehow slept past my alarm, had some pretty bad stomach pain, and just generally felt like I was struggling to keep my life in order like I had before! I felt kind of silly and wondered what was going on!

Then I had the opportunity to listen in to a musical number given at the Provo MTC devotional this evening. A missionary who I don't know performed "Abide With Me" and it was absolutely beautiful, but at the end he sang one more verse that is not in our hymnbook and that I had never heard before:

"I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness
Where is death's sting?
Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me"

I felt the Spirit's peace really strongly in that last line! No matter what we are going through in life or how poorly we execute our plans, the Savior Jesus Christ loves to abide with us and redeem us each day from our daily mistakes and weaknesses. He never gets tired of that! And even when it seems that nothing is going right or that we are generally not succeeding, I know that last line is true: If we turn to Him, we will triumph in what really matters--getting back up and moving forward when things don't go as we wanted!