3/24/2010

Celebrating the Life of Jesus Christ


   
It is important to remember that before Easter morning came the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and the pain on the cross.  Though we will never fully understand or appreciate what the Savior went through for us we can find comfort in the knowledge that because of what he did for us, he absolutely knows how to comfort us.

Each of us will have hard times, moments when we wonder if God knows us and cares.  I promise you . . . God knows you and loves you.

Because Christ has experienced everything we will ever experience He can say . . . "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neiehter let it be afraid." John 14:27

Elder Jeffery Holland, offers this insight into trying times:
"Most of us, most of the time, speak of the facility at Liberty as a 'jail' or a 'prison' and certainly it was that. Certainly  . . . could Liberty Jail be called a 'temple,' and what does such a title tell us about God's love and teachings, including where and when that love and those teachings are made manifest? In precisely this sense: that you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experiences with the Lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experiences with the Lord in the most miserable experiences of your life in the worst settings, while enduring the most painful injustices, when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced."  (Ensign, Sept. 2009, 28)

Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin said: "Each of us will have our own Fridays- those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We will all experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put back together again. We will all have our Fridays. But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death - Sunday will come. In the darkenss of our sorrow, Sunday will come. No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come." (Ensign, Nov. 2006,30).