Great and Spacious
There ain't nothin' holdin' it up
Listen
Start by listening to Great and Spacious from Hold the Line. The words are on the song’s page.
The message
Lehi saw it in a dream. A tree with fruit sweeter than anything he'd ever tasted, and when he ate it, the first thing he wanted was for his family to have some too. A rod of iron ran along a narrow path to the tree, through a mist of darkness. And across the river stood a great and spacious building, high in the air, with no foundation under it, full of people in fine clothes, laughing and pointing at everyone who came to the tree.
Nephi asked what it all meant, and the angel showed him. Before he explained the tree, he showed Nephi a virgin holding a child in her arms, and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!" Then he asked, "Knowest thou the meaning of the tree?" and Nephi answered, "It is the love of God." Sit with that. The love of God isn't an idea. It has a face. The fruit of the tree is what Jesus Christ came to give us. The rod of iron is the word of God. And the building is the pride of the world, and in the end it falls, and "the fall thereof was exceedingly great."
Here's the saddest part of the dream, and it's not the building. It's the people who made it all the way to the tree. They held the rod through the mist, they tasted the fruit, and then they looked up at the windows, felt ashamed, and wandered off. The mockery didn't drag them away. Shame did. The man in this song is honest about that: he's felt that pull himself, because it's a hard thing being laughed at when you're standing by yourself.
But listen to what Lehi said about the people in the building: "we heeded them not." That's the whole answer. The song puts it this way: a man who lives for their applause will die by it the same, so he quit counting up their voices and never learned their names. You don't have to win the argument with the building. You just have to stop listening to it.
Nephi made a promise about the rod: whoever hearkens to the word of God and holds fast to it will never perish, and the temptations and fiery darts of the adversary cannot overpower them to blindness. So keep both hands on the iron. Keep your eyes on the tree, on the love of God made flesh in Jesus Christ. Paul called Him the chief cornerstone, and a house without that Cornerstone was always going to fall. When it does, the people holding on will still be right where they were, standing by the tree.
Ponder
Whose laughter, or whose applause, has had a vote in how openly you follow Jesus Christ, and what would change if you stopped counting their voices?
Try this tonight
Read 1 Nephi 8:24-33 slowly, and notice where Lehi kept his hands and his eyes. Then choose one thing tomorrow that you'd usually skip because someone might laugh, and do it anyway.