HAPPINESS

 

 

I have posted of late a lot of pictures of Jesus smiling. The response to these pictures has been overwhelming with many of you loving to see Him happy. I agree these pictures are beautiful and very endearing. I guess, because we love Him, we don’t like to be reminded of His suffering. It is drummed into us repeatedly. What we are not regularly reminded of is His happiness ‘who for the JOY endured the cross (Hebrews 12:1-2). Of course He is happy, He suffered, He endured and He is now exalted.

One innocent comment I had to one of Christ’s smiling images was: “I wonder what He could be seeing to give Him such a happy smile. Probably a puppy or a kitty”. I could tell you what would really make the Saviour smile, our righteousness. I was very happy to see another comment confirming my belief: “I know that Jesus smiles every time we do good and keep our covenants with Him”.

I am very passionate about ‘trust’. I relish paying my bills because it confirms to me and to those who have provided me with a service, that I can be trusted. My value of trust has been one of the things that has kept me on the strait and narrow path. My reasoning is this: If I have made a covenant at baptism to obey the commandments and made higher covenants in the Temple and then walk away from these covenants, where is my integrity? The message I then send is that I cannot be trusted. It would kill me if God thought He could not trust me. So yes, every time we do good and keep our covenants we bring a smile to the Saviour’s face.

When John the Revelator wrote that Christ is ‘the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’ he was telling us that the Atonement was already in place in the premortal world and that the Atonement performed in mortality was just a formality. We could draw upon its blessings and power in pre-existence as if it had already happened. This is the power by which we overcame Satan in the great war in heaven (Revelation 13:8; 1 Peter 1:18-20; Mosiah 3:13; 4:7; D&C 93:38; see also Institute Manual comments for Revelation 12:11). I stand amazed at the man of integrity that the Saviour was from the very beginning. That we not only believed that He COULD carry out the Atonement but that He WOULD. That’s trust of the highest kind. That’s a gift to humanity beyond description. So yes, every time we keep our covenants, we affirm our faith and gratitude that He kept HIS covenant before the world began. The question is, can He trust US???

The Saviour’s happiness is very much intertwined with ours. The joy that was before Him when He hung on the cross was not only for His but also our eternal happiness. Of course He would be happy if He knew He did not suffer in vein. The Atoning power with which we overcame Satan I pre-existence is the power by which we can overcome him again. How happy that would make the Saviour if we overcame His enemy in this life and subdued the powers of hell with our righteousness! Perhaps we should be a bit more concerned about making HIM happy and less about ourselves. Smile, He is on our side…..

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Jesus the Source of Joy by Ivan Guaderrama)