The Olive Tree explained

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I've always struggled with the allegory of the tame and wild olive trees as found in the Book of Mormon in Jacob 5.

Our Relief Society is reading the Book of Mormon in 40 days and when I came to Jacob 5 I first thought, "Oh boy. I won't get anything out of these next 5 pages." But then it occurred to me to read the Institute manual on this chapter before actually reading it. I found this quote and it drastically changed my view. Instead of seeing each branch as a person who eventually gets cast away, I now see the unhealthy branches as sins and bad habits and the entire vineyard is just me. He does all that work just for me and so desires to bring me unto himself. (I will admit I always saw the vineyard owner as a little greedy that he wanted all the fruit. But he wants US to be with him forever.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presented the principal theme of Zenos’s allegory:
“This allegory as recounted by Jacob is from the outset intended to be about Christ. …
“Even as the Lord of the vineyard and his workers strive to bolster, prune, purify, and otherwise make productive their trees in what amounts to a one-chapter historical sketch of the scattering and gathering of Israel, the deeper meaning of the Atonement undergirds and overarches their labors. In spite of cuttings and graftings and nourishings that mix and mingle trees in virtually all parts of the vineyard, it is bringing them back to their source that is the principal theme of this allegory. Returning, repenting, reuniting—at-one-ment—this is the message throughout.
“… At least fifteen times the Lord of the vineyard expresses a desire to bring the vineyard and its harvest to his ‘own self,’ and he laments no less than eight times, ‘It grieveth me that I should lose this tree.’ One student of the allegory says it should take its place beside the parable of the prodigal son, inasmuch as both stories ‘make the Lord’s mercy so movingly memorable.’
“Clearly this at-one-ment is hard, demanding, and, at times, deeply painful work, as the work of redemption always is. There is digging and dunging. There is watering and nourishing and pruning. And there is always the endless approaches to grafting—all to one saving end, that the trees of the vineyard would ‘thrive exceedingly’ and become ‘one body; … the fruits [being] equal,’ with the Lord of the vineyard having ‘preserved unto himself the … fruit.’ From all the distant places of sin and alienation in which the children of the Father find themselves, it has always been the work of Christ (and his disciples) in every dispensation to gather them, heal them, and unite them with their Master” (Christ and the New Covenant [1997], 165–66). (Book of Mormon Student Manual, Chapter 16: Jacob 5–7)