Saturday, January 17, 2015

Feeling Alone

We are taught that the Savior experienced all sins, shortcomings, and sufferings that we have ever and will ever experience. Because of this we are able to go to him in all circumstances and he will truly empathize with us on a very specific and personal level.

When reading The King of Kings by Bruce D. Porter, something stood out to me about the Savior and his life... he was alone... a lot! Porter says, "Regardless of who he was, we know that (even the) ministering angel (in Gethsemane) did not accompany Christ through his entire ordeal. At least a portion of the Atonement in Gethsemane was borne in utter loneliness." In Isaiah 63:3 Christ states, "I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me." And again in Isaiah 63:5 he says, "And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold."

Even at the end of his life he was alone. The spirit left him and he cried out, "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me." Porter says referencing this moment in time, "Without the presence of (the) spirit, no mortal man could live in the flesh for even an instant, for it is the source of all life and light. Only Jesus Christ, the Great Jehovah, the Self-Existent one could endure its complete withdrawal and still live - through in such straits of agony as caused him to bleed form every pore. The withdrawal of the Father's spirit was the bitter cup of Gethsemane that Jesus shrank from, yet partook. It was the culminating crucible of the Atonement."

He was alone for a lot of his life, especially at the end when things were at their worst. If there is anything that Christ can truly and perfectly empathize with, it is the feeling of being alone. He knows exactly how it feels. He felt more alone than we will ever feel or ever have the capacity to feel.

With love,
jm

"The Lord was alone in a spiritual void, stripped of all sources of solace, cut off from the presence of the Father, bearing in soul and body by virtue of his own strength alone the collective guilt of all mankind. How long the weight of our sins crushed upon him we do not know; how unrelenting his anguish we cannot comprehend. But of that atoning trial, the Savior said, 'therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto me; and my fury, it upheld me' (Isaiah 63:5). In the wondrous balance of Heaven's plan, Christ's 'own arm' - his divine strength, his virtue, his unyielding love- redeemed us." - Bruce D. Porter in The King of Kings

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