Meno -- Abide!

This morning, for some reason, I felt compelled to do a word study on meno’ which is translated as abide, remains, continues, tarries, stays and in the Message version, live deeply. This word is used 118 times in the Bible, and a whopping 67 of those times are at the hand of John.  This word is used 40 times in the Gospel of John; 23 times in I John, and another 3 in 2 John.  If we count the one in Revelations and some derivatives of that word, the numbers go even higher.

I’m not much of a Bible scholar, but when this kind of energy is being poured into me to cause me to gather my study tools to look up lots of verses, I am learning to ask why.

What does it mean to abide? To remain? I think it means to stay so deeply attached that nothing can shake us loose. I can see myself holding onto the life line while on the ship’s bow during a huge storm. The only thing keeping me from being washed into the turbulent sea is my grip on the very rope I’m holding. Nothing can pry my fingers loose. My knuckles may turn white, my arm muscles might tighten to the point of cramping, but I will not let go.  To me, that is abiding.

For another strange reason, I am reminded of a nickname I was given by a two-year old with William’s Syndrome.  Little Dara Day was such a delightful child, and the moment that I moved into the apartment connected to hers, we fell in love with each other.

Dara couldn’t say Linda, so she called me “Minno.”  I could not, for the life of me, figure out how she got Minno out of Linda, but her parents and I thought it was so endearing, that they still call me that to this day.

I think now, Dara was calling me Meno’.  She knew I was staying there, next door to her. In her childlike ways, I see now that she rested in knowing that I wasn’t like her family’s other friends who would come and I go. I actually was going to continue to live there. I would abide as her neighbor. I meno’d there!

When the storms of life and the ensuing chaos comes, I will picture my home in that apartment, next door to little Dara Day. Dara who knew that her new grown-up friend lived there, and would stay and hang out.

Abide.

Meno!