There I Will Meet Thee

The Christian singer Tasha Layton recently released a song called Meet Me in the Valley. For her the valley is a symbol of a place of suffering and struggle, and one article about the song summarizes, “We talk a lot about mountaintop moments in church. We don’t talk enough about what it actually feels like when you’re in the valley.” If mountains are high points, like Moses meeting God on Mount Sinai, then the valley for her is a low point. This is how the psalmist used the word in this well-known scripture: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). Here the valley represents our greatest difficulties. The lyrics of the song include these words:

What You said on the mountain

Is still true in the valley

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me, follow me

All You've said on the mountain

I'll believe in the valley

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me, follow me

Meet me in this valley

Come meet me in this valley, I need You, Lord 

Surely the Lord indeed will meet us in our low points just as He does in our high points; in the “valley” just as well as on the “mountain.”

            When I was on my mission, I found a scripture in the Book of Mormon that I used often and which meant a lot to me. It is these words of the Lord to the brother of Jared as he was departing the tower of Babel with his people: “And when thou hast done this thou shalt go at the head of them down into the valley which is northward. And there will I meet thee, and I will go before thee into a land which is choice above all the lands of the earth” (Ether 1:42). What was remarkable to me was that the Lord set up a meeting with the brother of Jared, saying essentially “go here and I will meet you.” I used this to teach that when the Lord invites us to be somewhere—such as sacrament meeting or a temple endowment or even scripture study in our own home—we can be sure that He will meet us there as we go with faith. I would ask, “Will you show up at the meeting He has set up?” I was struck this morning by the fact that the Lord’s invitation here is exactly what this song was about: the Lord invited the brother of Jared to meet Him in the valley! The insight the song provides is that perhaps we can see that “valley” for the brother of Jared as a low point, a place of struggle, a time of difficulty as his people sought their promised land.

            The next chapter tells of how the brother of Jared’s group indeed met the Lord in the valley of Nimrod. We read, “And it came to pass that Jared and his brother, and their families, and also the friends of Jared and his brother and their families, went down into the valley which was northward, (and the name of the valley was Nimrod, being called after the mighty hunter) with their flocks which they had gathered together, male and female, of every kind…. And it came to pass that when they had come down into the valley of Nimrod the Lord came down and talked with the brother of Jared; and he was in a cloud, and the brother of Jared saw him not” (Ether 2:1, 4). Though the text does not describe the difficulties of this group there, surely they had many as the left their homes and tried to survive in the wilderness. But, as promised, the Lord met them there and directed them towards the promised land: “And it came to pass that the Lord commanded them that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been. And it came to pass that the Lord did go before them, and did talk with them as he stood in a cloud, and gave directions whither they should travel” (Ether 2:1, 4-5). The Lord was indeed with them in the valley, guiding them through their difficulties to a better place.

            The brother of Jared is most well-known for his encounter with the Lord on the mountain as described in Ether 3. On the mount Shelem he presented his 16 stones to the Lord and there he had a most glorious vision of the premortal Christ. So, he found the Lord both on the mountain and in the valley. He found the Savior at both his high place and his low place, and his story can inspire us that God will meet us both in our triumphs and in our greatest difficulties. The Lord gave this promise in our dispensation that He will indeed be with us wherever we are as we seek Him: “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up” (Doctrine and Covenants 85:88).