Elder Kearon: Jesus Lives to Lift
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Drawing on his teenage years learning to fly gliders, Elder Patrick Kearon teaches how to avoid spiritual “sink” and find the Savior’s lift.
In his October 2026 general conference address, Elder Patrick Kearon of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles drew on a boyhood experience, learning to fly gliders with the Royal Air Force in England, to teach how the Savior lifts us.
Lift and sink
As a teenager at an airfield in Oxfordshire, Elder Kearon learned that a glider has no engine and stays aloft by riding rising air, called "lift." You cannot see lift, he explained, but you can see what it does and, more importantly, learn to feel it. Pilots also learn to recognize "sink," descending air that can make a glider feel as if it is falling, and to turn away from it decisively.
The Savior loves to lift
Years later, early in his journey of faith, he saw that these principles have spiritual parallels. He pointed to scriptural accounts of Jesus lifting people up: Peter sinking in the waves, the daughter of Jairus raised from death, and the boy healed of an unclean spirit whom Jesus "took by the hand, and lifted him up."
If you are not climbing, you are descending
In gliding, a pilot who is not climbing is slowly descending, often without noticing. Elder Kearon compared this to how easily we can drift from spiritual heights when we neglect the practices that brought us there. He cited Ammon's joy in Alma 26 as an example of moving from the deepest sink to glorious lift.
Living in lift
His counsel is simple: find a faithful guide, tune in to the feelings of the Holy Spirit, join others who are climbing, watch for subtle signs of sink and turn away from them, and show others where to rise. He closed by testifying that the Savior "is your ever-rising air," and that there is no limit to how high we can climb with Him.
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