The Savior's Gift to Us

I'm pretty much living and breathing Easter this week, and that feels good. We are preparing and practicing for what promises to be a wonderful program Sunday in the young single adult congregation that my husband has the good fortune of leading. This carefully orchestrated blend of words and music will be presented to themselves, by themselves (or by a big number of them, anyway), and that's why it's going to be lovely. Simply because they are.

Last night, I had the narrators over for a practice and was so touched by the way they interpreted my poetry about Christ, His atonement, and the resurrection that I couldn't stop thinking about them after they went home. These are talented, remarkable women, and I am glad to know them. After rehearsing, the two of them joined a dozen or so of their peers around our kitchen table to discuss ways to minister to the 125 active members they serve in their capacity as ward leaders. What an amazing group of people they all are. We love them.

How grateful I am for the atonement of Christ, whose love for us is beyond imagining. Because of His sacrifice...His willingness to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows...my brother-in-law (who lost his father Monday morning and will eulogize him tomorrow) can know for a surety that death is but a temporary separation before that joyful day of reunion arrives.

Surely there can be no greater gift than this, and resurrection is only a culminating event of the Savior's offering. When we open our hearts, His saving grace reaches out to every one of us...in every extremity we suffer...for there is nothing we can experience on this earth, no matter how painful, that He has not already experienced in our behalf...no suffering so personal that He cannot extend the healing comfort of His perfect love and understanding.

Having completed Stephanie Nielson's book (Heaven is Here) yesterday, I decided to read a few reviews and see if others enjoyed it as much as I did. My interest captured, I wound up pouring over considerably more than a few, and nearly every one of them expressed in one form or another the belief that Stephanie's faith is what pulled her through one of the worst trials imaginable. I agree wholeheartedly with that conclusion, and I would suggest that her remarkable faith and healing is powered by the atonement of Jesus Christ.

I would also suggest that much of His work must be carried forward by us, for we are His hands here on earth, as I'm sure Stephanie can attest. She has felt God's sustaining hand through the hands of those who know and love her...and those who do not know, but love her.

May we all embrace the Savior's incomparable gift, and may we use it to fulfill His desires for us:

"For behold, this my work and my glory––to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

Moses 1:39

The Savior's Art

©1999 by Susan Noyes Anderson, Awaken Your Spiritual Power, Karisma Press

If I accept His sacrifice divine,

Returning love for love as He has done;

If I forget myself and touch the one

Whose sorrows weigh as heavily as mine;

Then will I weave my thread in His design,

That great design the Master's hand has spun;

Wherein salvation through His blood is won,

And all are fed and nurtured on His vine.

If I reach out and calm a troubled heart,

Or let another heal the rift in me;

If, in distress, I take another's part,

As Jesus took mine at Gethsemane;

Then I embrace the Savior's loving art,

And honor Him throughout eternity.

"I am the vine, ye are the branches; He that abideth in me and I in him,

the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me, ye can do nothing."

John 15:4

And isn't it wonderful?

=)