This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the April 2009 Conference.
All the talks in this session were so good! They were given on Palm Sunday, so many of them were about Easter and Jesus Christ, and it was nice to read them during Holy Week. It was hard to choose what to write about, but one of the quotes I liked most was (of course) from Elder Holland's talk, "None Were With Him":
But Jesus held on. He pressed on. The goodness in Him allowed faith to triumph even in a state of complete anguish. The trust He lived by told Him in spite of His feelings that divine compassion is never absent, that God is always faithful, that He never flees nor fails us.
This is something I hadn't considered before—that Jesus showed the same trust in Heavenly Father that I am trying to learn! I had thought (because of this talk) about Him feeling lonely and abandoned, but I hadn't thought about Him clinging to trust anyway, that He would have to courageously "against hope believe in hope" and trust His Father hadn't abandoned Him even though it felt like He had. In my head I can imagine a sort of barrier or veil symbolizing the withdrawal of the Spirit that had to be placed between the two of them so Jesus would truly experience all that we feel. But it's beautiful to imagine Heavenly Father on one side, as Elder Holland says "never…closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering." And Jesus standing right next to Him on the other side, holding on to trust that soon the veil will be parted and He will again see and feel His Father who has been there all along.
I was telling Clementine the Easter story at bedtime one night this week. When my kids get hurt they always say "I have a bleeding spot!" so I told her about how Jesus had "bleeding spots" all over his body from feeling our pains and sorrows. When I got to the part about how Jesus died and His spirit went to heaven, Clementine interrupted me urgently—"And then he ran to Heavenly Father and told him he had a bleeding spot? And Heavenly Father kissed him?" I loved her sweet certainty about what should happen when we get hurt—and I love to know that it really is what happened, and what will happen for us if we turn to our Father through our pains and sorrows. Elder Holland's words are some of the most comforting I have ever read:
Brothers and sisters, one of the great consolations of this Easter season is that because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so. His solitary journey brought great company for our little version of that path—the merciful care of our Father in Heaven, the unfailing companionship of this Beloved Son, the consummate gift of the Holy Ghost, angels in heaven, family members on both sides of the veil, prophets and apostles, teachers, leaders, friends. All of these and more have been given as companions for our mortal journey because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His gospel. Trumpeted from the summit of Calvary is the truth that we will never be left alone nor unaided, even if sometimes we may feel that we are. Truly the Redeemer of us all said, “I will not leave you comfortless: [My Father and] I will come to you [and abide with you].”
Other posts in this series:
Christ, Our Savior—by Jan
I am not alone—by Rozy
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