As we continue to nourish the word, it will grow up within us as a tree springing up unto everlasting life, bearing fruit that is precious and eternal in its significance, for it is the love of God and the blessing of eternal life.
Consider what Alma has done for the Zoramites—and by extension for all of us in modern times. Once he has provided the context for an experiment in faith, he guides us in a step-by-step program that will elevate us beyond our self-imposed confinement of spiritual impoverishment and lift us toward a fulfillment of our innate desire for liberation and enlightenment. Alma teaches us this principle: “if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21). He then enlarges on this theme by comparing the operation of faith with the germination of a seed within the soul. By careful observation of the unfolding of the seed (the vitality of the word of God as it opens up within the penitent and humble heart), the seeker after truth can know of the seed’s goodness as an emblem of the light of spiritual understanding. He or she can then exercise faith by nourishing the seed until it can take root and develop into a tree of life bearing blessings of spiritual fruit for the faithful.
Elder Neal A. Maxwell comments on this divine process, this miracle of gospel enlightenment:
Even if we can do no more “than desire to believe,” said Alma, we are to “give place” for the gospel seed; we are to let that desire work within us by trying the experiment of the gospel’s goodness in the laboratory of life, giving it place in our thoughts, attitudes, and schedules; otherwise it will be crowded out of its place by other pressing cares.
When it is properly planted, we then experience the seed’s swelling growth. We discern its goodness, and our faith “in that thing” can eventually be transformed into genuine knowledge. Unlike Jonah’s gourd, however, it does not grow overnight. Some of its fruit only comes “by and by.” Nevertheless, we are responsible for nourishing the sprouting seed; otherwise it will not develop a good root system, and when the heat of the sun comes, it will wither. And how do we nourish it? By “faith, with great diligence, and with patience.” (Alma 32.)
How vital it is to be rooted and grounded in order to take the scorching heat that will be a part of that special summer of circumstances which precedes the second coming of the Son of Man in power and glory and majesty. A brief, scorching season, that summer will climax the centuries as the special moment among the millennia of mortal time. (We Will Prove Them Herewith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982], 16–17)