Of all the interesting analogies to use, the image of the nursing mother is perhaps the most graphic. How could it be possible for a nursing mother to forget a child? The biological process alone would bring to the mother’s mind the child’s existence at regular feeding times. It would seem essentially impossible for such an act of forgetfulness to occur. Yet, allowing even for this extreme possibility, and taking the improbabilities into account, Nephi is saying even if such a remarkably unlikely thing were to occur, God will not, God cannot, forget His people. He will never leave the plan He has laid for the final triumph of His chosen people.
Seasons of apparent neglect and forgetfulness mean nothing. His people have always been as intimate to Him as the nursing child is to the mother. This intimacy gives us pause in ever thinking the Lord can or has forgotten His people.
From her own body, the mother gives to her nursing infant, life. Through the fluid of her own life she nourishes her child. These images are not given to us without great care. It was through the spilled lifeblood of Christ that His people were and are nourished. His atoning sacrifice provides the sustenance for His people in every bit as direct a way as the mother’s milk sustains the life of her infant. Through His blood we are healed.
This intimate, deeply personal and directly sacrificial analogy is a powerful reminder of how the Lord feels and acts toward us. He is not a distant Lord. Alma uses a word in relation to Christ which also relates to this same nursing mother analogy: “he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.” (Alma 7: 12.) The word “succor” is derived from the nursing mother’s act of feeding her infant. Alma is teaching us just how remarkably capable Christ’s sufferings in the Atonement have befitted Him to be our Savior, guide and teacher. Nephi is using the analogy of the nursing mother to remind us how dependent upon, and remembered by, the Lord we all are.