At the end of the ward Halloween party on Friday, there was a scream of pain and sadness. This was our three-year old son, Everett. He had been playing with some other kids, most of whom were bigger than him, and had tripped and fallen in the parking lot, hurting his knee. This is NOT an uncommon occurrence. In fact, his knee was fine on Friday because we already had a Band-Aid covering another scrape that also came from a similar experience earlier that week.
One of my weaknesses is when things go bad, I tend to want to blame someone for it. Which isn’t a great response when your child has fallen and skinned his knee, because most of the time it’s his own fault. If he would just slow down and not run, none of this would be an issue! So, this frequently leads to a situation where I’m holding a crying three-year old, trying to help clean him up and comfort him, all while fuming and angry/ irritated because of the entire situation. It’s definitely a parenting fail.
There are two major negative reactions in this situation. We have Everett’s pain and we have my irritation/anger, and I would say both of these are part of our lives as imperfect people living in an imperfect world. I want to focus today on how my understanding the Atonement gives me comfort to overcome both of those kinds of feelings.
First is the sin of my getting irritated/angry, and the negative reactions that come with that. This is me falling short of what our Heavenly Father expects of his children, which is ultimately to be perfect the way that Christ was. And my mistakes and failings spiritually are not limited to one-off events during the day. I know I am definitely an imperfect person, but through the Atonement, I am able to constantly try to be better.
Mosiah 3:19 says: For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love.”
So, if we are willing to accept the atonement in our lives and be willing to do the things Christ expects from us, we will be able to overcome the natural man. Now, I recognize that this is NOT easy. Changing our natures takes time, effort, patience, and a willingness to constantly work on becoming better. I have started to work, and continue to work, on being patient and full of love when my child does something that irritates me. Elder Christofferson taught: “To deal with something big, we may need to work at it in small, daily bites… incorporating new and wholesome character habits into our character or overcoming bad habits or additions often means an effort today followed by another tomorrow and then another, perhaps for many days, even months and years..but we can do it because we appeal to God for the help we need each day.”
I know that when I’m irritated at my children, or don’t read my scriptures, or fail to serve when I am able, I am missing the mark of what Heavenly Father expects of me. But I know that if I am willing to repent and try again the next time, I can be hopeful in my ability to live with our Heavenly Father. The Atonement takes the punishment of those sins from me, so long as I keep trying to be better and live the way Christ would want me to. This is ultimately a hopeful, happy thought, and I think each of us can approach our sins as things that can be overcome, because the Atonement allows us to do so.
The second part this example is Everett’s pain. I would expand this to the general issues that come up in life, that come about because we are people. Dale G Renlund recently described this as unfairness and said: Inexplicable unfairness is infuriating. Unfairness comes from living with bodies that are imperfect, injured, or diseased. Mortal life is inherently unfair.”
I think this can, at times, be really hard to reconcile with what we expect as members of the church. If we are living the commandments, there are lots of things we do extra or do not do in order to obey Heavenly Father’s commandments. But because we live in an imperfect word, even when we are obeying the commandments, bad things can still happen to us. Often in life we see the equation of “do the good thing, you get good results.” Work hard, be successful. If you work out a muscle, you will get stronger. But because we live in an imperfect world, there is no guarantee that because we follow the commandments, our lives are going to be free from pain or the malaise of life.
Thankfully, we have the Atonement. The Atonement does not take these pains or problems away from us. However, it does allow us to have someone to turn to who intimately understands the pain we are going through. Alma 7: 11 says, in reference to Jesus Christ: “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.”
So, Christ has experienced the same pains and afflictions that we have, which means that we when those pains become difficult, we can communicate with him through prayer and know that he understands the problems we are going through. The Holy Ghost can then communicate the love and comfort that Christ feels for us, which allows us to keep going through life.
As I was preparing this talk, this helped me to see 1 Nephi 3:7 in an entirely new light: “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of man, save he shall prepare a way for them they that may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.” The Lord gives us commandments here on earth, knowing that they will be hard. But, because Christ has suffered and felt the “afflictions” that might come from living those commandments, there is always a way for us to accomplish those commandments.
Alma the Younger’s knowledge of the Atonement I think, is why he was able to overcome the trials he experienced in his own life. He originally tried to destroy the church of God, but through the prayers of his family, had a spiritual conversion that made him recognize the magnitude of his sins. Because of the Atonement, he was able to overcome his sins and he dedicated his life to teaching the gospel. But during that work, he experienced so many hardships. The people of Ammonihah threw him in prison and made Alma watch as they killed all of the believers in the city. Alma saw the Zoramite people fall away from the church and pervert the doctrines of the gospel. And then saw his missionary son sin and hurt Alma’s efforts to teach the gospel.
These are all incredibly hard things to go through in life. But at the end of Alma’s ministry, he speaks to his sons, and says in Alma 36:27: “And I have been supported under trials and troubles of every kind, yea, and in all manner of afflictions; yea, God has delivered me from prison, and from bonds, and from death; yea, and I do put my trust in him, and he will still deliver me.”
Alma doesn’t say that the trials go away, but he has been supported and has put his trust in God to always deliver him. I have a testimony that each of us can experience that support as well. In my trials, the Lord has helped me to overcome them and I know that if we reach out and seek for the comfort from the Lord, he will reassure us through our pain and help us to endure, even if the pain is something small like a skinned knee. :-)
As I was writing this talk, I thought a lot about not only what the Atonement does in our lives, but also how we access it, and I think it is often through prayer. If we are looking for forgiveness from our sins from Heavenly Father, we have to seek for that forgiveness by praying to him. As we do so, we ask for forgiveness in the name of Jesus Chris, which then allows us to access the healing power of the Atonement. If we are seeking for comfort from the Lord, we also reach out in prayer, explaining the difficult situation we are in and how we could use comfort from the Holy Spirit. That comfort comes from Christ, who suffered and died for us so that he can provide that comforting presence. The Bible Dictionary describes prayer as “the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them.” The Atonement is a blessing that is always available to us, but we have to ask for it from the Lord.
This week’s Come Follow Me lesson covers Joseph Smith’s time in Liberty Jail, and is a beautiful example of prayer, and the comfort that can come through that prayer. 121 1-6 are questions to the Lord and pleas for the Saints to see his hand in their lives. While we may not have problems such as mobs and stolen property, the answer the Lord provides applies to any of us seeking for that comfort.
“My son (and I would add daughter), peace be unto thy soul, thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high”
Each of us can feel the Atonement of Christ in our lives, if we will ask for it through prayers to our Father in Heaven. No matter what we have done or what we are going through, Christ has suffered it as well, and wants to help us get through our trials.
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