2013

I have written before that on the new year I always ask God for a word or phrase for the year. This year the phrase is "Abide in Me". The Me obviously being Him. What I need to know is what does "Abide in Me" mean. I know what it means with my head, at least in part I do, but I need to know what it means in my heart and my spirit.

The first step to do this was to do a search of verses with the word "abide" in them. Here's the verse of the day. "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty." Psalm 91:1.

I went ahead and looked up some of these words to find out what they mean. I looked up "dwells", "shelter", and "abide" because even though I know what they mean I really want to understand the verse.

So according to www.thefreedictionary.com these are there means, or at least the ones that fit the part of speech and the verse.

Dwells - to live as a resident; reside. to exist in a given place or state
Shelter - a refuge; a haven
Abide - to remain in a place. to continue to be sure or firm; endure

So with these definitions the verse can be loosely translated as "Whoever takes up residence in the refuge of God will remain in the shadow of the Lord." That sounds good, and I was about to leave it at that.

I was about to leave the website because I know what "shadow" means. Even though I know what it means I wasn't sure what the shadow of the Almighty means. So I went ahead and looked up shadow. There are a lot of means for shadow! This is the one that I think fits the verse perfectly.

Shadow - shelter; protection

So now the verse would be "Whoever takes up residence in the refuge of God will remain in the protection of the Lord." This I can understand.

I was thinking shadow as just well the shadow or in dictionary language "An area that is not or is only partially irradiated or illuminated because of the interception of radiation by an opaque object between the area and the source of radiation." If I didn't know it was about a shadow I would be totally confused rather than just confused by that definition.

If His shadow was just an area separate from Him why would I want to abide there? Thankfully that isn't what it is at all. I am glad that it is His protection.

So, this year I am going to learn what it means to abide in Him and I am pretty exited about learn to.