More Than Repentance

         “The Atonement is not only about repentance!”  These words still ring through my ears, since I first heard them twenty years ago this Christmas.  You see I was 10,000 miles away from home in Australia.  And I didn't like it.  Not Australia, but I hadn't seen Australia yet.  I hadn't given myself the chance to even look.  My mind was home.  My heart was Home.  And my spirit was trapped in this body that wasn't.  It was only a few days to Christmas, and I hadn't received one word from home.  Not a Christmas card, not a postcard, nothing.  I had given up.  I was having my first experience with a lifetime full of separation anxiety  and I was a long way from home.

In fact since I knew I would be calling home I had made up my mind I was leaving.  I started seeing my friends drive by me, or walk by me.  At least people who for a moment looked exactly like them.  Kyle was the high school kid in the main home of the family that we stayed in the Flat out back.   I saw Amanda’s Toyota Vista drive by my house every morning and it might has well of been her driving.  The girl at the shopping center looked way to much like Wendy.  And the burly Maori in my district reminded me of Casey.  Everywhere I turned I had signs screaming at me to come home.  And my companion Elder Ricks knew it. 

He was way too happy for me to like him.  It wasn't his fault it was mine, but I wanted to punch him in the face every morning when he would smile and let me know it was time to get up and start our day.  “How could he be so happy about that?” How could he be so happy about everything?”  I wanted to take his missionary guide and … well anyway I didn't want to get up.  And I didn't want to be there.  I realized that maybe I should go home.  I wasn't ready for this, I hadn't grown up enough.  I still needed time.  I’m just holding back the work.  

On or just before Christmas Eve Elder Ricks got serious with me.  He spoke in a very compassionate tone.  He confronted me with what he knew I was going through.  At first I dismissed it, my pride wouldn't let me admit it.  But after some time, I told him, told him that I had made a huge mistake.  I told him I didn't belong here.  And to my amazement he agreed.  In one of the most compassionate ways I have ever witnessed.  He agreed.  It took me back.  I was stunned with such a force I did not know what to think.  “OK” was all I could get out.  “I’m not saying you should leave, that’s your decision.”  He said “I’m just saying you don’t belong, you are somewhere else you won’t allow yourself to belong.” 

Did you ever notice that no matter how compassionate someone is that when they see through your terribly hidden reality and call it out to you, it stings?  Just sayin.

Anyway, I told him I had tried, that I was able to put on a good face at the MTC, but I was dying inside.  My prayers had moved from the prayers of the previous summer, after rekindling my wayward spirit in preparation for my mission.  This time that even today rivals any other time when it comes to engaging in a dialogue with my savior, and of heartfelt spiritual renewal, a time where I really felt I had made the steps toward being an adult.   Now my prayers we forced and broken.  Struggling not to ask the question I truly wanted to know.  Should I leave?  I knew the answer was no.  But I worried the answer was yes.  And I desired with so much of my heart to just go home except I also wanted to stay. 

We talked about all this for a while and then he said I needed the atonement.  ‘Whatever!’ I thought, ‘Din’t he hear me I didn’t sin, its not like this has anything to do with repentance, that is a whole other issue.’

I guess he perceived my lack of comprehension. Because he then told me “The Atonement is not only about repentance!”

I think you can quite rightly picture Wille E. Coyote with his load of acme bricks only instead of him accidentally dropping them on the roadrunner, they landed square on my head. 

It had never occurred to me that there was more to it than that. 

This was the first time I learned this lesson, but it would not be the last.  In fact one of the more poignant ones happened a little over 2 years ago as I stood in a unknown congregation as an apostle spoke and afterward instructed us by changing the Hymn to “How Firm a Foundation”.  But there have been countless other.  I imagine this is a lesson that I will relearn and reapply the rest of my life. 

All of this is going through my head because of the deep love and concern I have for some friends and family that right at this instant is going through some extremely hard times.  In fact, I look at some of the struggles I have had and wonder if they even compare.  Mostly because I think I had more control over mine.  

There were more opportunities for me to make a change.  Except as I say that I know that that’s not right and good, to compare myself with others.   But regardless, I wish I could reach out and take those struggles away. 

On that issue I think there is something to be said about the atonement and our struggles.  I see very little to suggest that Christ ever takes our struggles away.  And even when it seems he does, like when Moses and the children of Israel crossed the red sea, it really leads to something else that is just as hard, or harder.  I think if the Children of Israel knew they would wander for 4 years they may have said “oh I really wouldn't want to miss the Nile in the fall it’s so lovely,” and kept on making more bricks. 

But you know the atonement is not something that passively happens once in our lives.  It is an ever living all encompassing shroud, that if we let it can over take our soul and guide our very desires.  And often the Atonement is more about helping us become stronger, than filling in the gaps. 

To those in the midst of the tornado it is definitely hard to yell in to them, “It is OK it’s only going to make you stronger!” as a cow floats by riding a bicycle.   I get it I've been there.  That is defiantly not helpful. 

But what I can do is plead for their happiness and their salvation, the same way they would pray for mine.  Because those who are true friends and family, whether they are praying people or not, when I am going through my thunder and lightning, I know that they would at minimum not be able to resist saying something like, “I hope that things will work out for their happiness.”  At least that, but I am a praying man.  I am someone who has faith in the hand of the Lord in my life.  And while these personal mountains that my loved ones are going through are not issues of repentance, they are issue for the atonement of Jesus Christ. 

And I don’t care if I keep quoting from this hymn, it is my favorite and I’ll quote from it again, in fact that whole section from the blog post I wrote two years ago when I was going through my own whirlwind:

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,

I will not, I will not desert to its foes;

That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,

I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

(How firm a foundation, verse 7)

I find it interesting that “How Firm a Foundtion” through the majority of its verse is written as if Christ is speaking to us.  Starting with “Fear not, I am with the” to the end.  Especially when you read some of the words of Isaiah in reference to the Messiah:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:3-4)

Even with his chosen Apostles, he falls victim to the weakness of men.  As much as we praise and honor him sometimes we are not as valiant in our testimonies as we should be.  Sometimes He calls us and we don’t hear.

Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.  And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.  Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.  And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.  And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?  Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.  He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.  And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.  And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.  Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. (Matthew 26:36-45)

Even though we in our weakness often turn away, or simply find it hard to continually keep ”watch with [him]”, he will never abandon us.  The following is an article from the January 2011 Ensign, called “Never Forsaken” By Adam C. Olson

… I was caught off guard one day when I read the first verse of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

I had never considered that the Savior may have been quoting sacred writings when He spoke those words in His agony on the cross (see Matthew 27:46). That idea led to a profound spiritual realization.

Almost all of us at some time have wondered, “O God, where art thou?” (D&C 121:1). That question has entered my mind most often during moments of spiritual uncertainty or distress.

For that reason the Savior’s words seemed to beg the question: Did His cry also rise from uncertainty—even doubt? Did it mean that there was a question for which my all-powerful, all-knowing Savior had no answer in the very moment my salvation depended on His power to provide all answers and overcome all things…?

…The very act of calling out to His Father in His greatest hour of need using words from holy writings was not only an evidence of faith but also a profound teaching opportunity. Though Psalm 22 begins with a question, it is an expression of profound trust that God does not forsake:

“Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.

“They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded” (verses 4–5).

Using the psalmist’s experiences as a foreshadowing of the Savior’s suffering, the psalm foretells the mocking (verses 7–8), the false trial and coming torture (verses 11–13), His pain and suffering (verse 14), His thirst (verse 15), the wounding of His hands and feet (verse 16), and the casting of lots and parting of His garments (verse 18).

Though the Savior quoted only the first verse, the remainder of the psalm stands as another testimony that He is the promised Messiah, that His suffering fulfilled prophecy, and that He trusted in His Father completely.

This understanding brought my soul an overwhelming reassurance that my faith was not misplaced. But even more powerful than learning that Jesus had not doubted and was delivered was the testimony in that psalm for the times when I wonder if God has forsaken me or when I worry that He has not heard my cry.

“Ye that fear [God], praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.

“For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted [Jesus]; neither hath [the Father] hid his face from him; but when [Jesus] cried unto him, he heard” (verses 23–24; emphasis added).

And I add that as he was not forsaken, I am not forsaken, my friends and family are not forsaken.  Just like the angel of the Lord that came down to strengthen Christ in his trial.  So too will the savior be there for us, in ours.