BECAUSE OF HIM

 

We are tempest tossed on this sea of humanity. Some of us are lost, scared, alienated, and most of us are suffering from some negative effect of mortal life, but there is one collective way in which we all suffer. 

I have been through trials before but have always had good health. The trial of bad health I am going through now has been incredibly hard for me because none of my trials before have tested me to this extent. It began to frighten me of late that I might be losing what I considered to be the most important part of me…..my faith. I was slipping into bad depression one day thinking if my faith in God was taken away from me, there would be nothing of me left because my faith was my make-up.

Upon further reflection I realized what I feared in reality was not losing my faith but my connection to God that I had developed in fifty years of my Church membership. I had come to the point where I was hearing the voice of God in my life in different ways and my testimony of His existence was iron clad. To lose that would be the devastation like I had never known before. I could not comprehend how lost I would feel in this vast universe. This is fear of nothingness for me.

For many years now I have tried to understand the true meaning of earthly suffering. I have been given different gospel perspectives to this question which I agree with but nothing had really stood out to me in such a personal way as what I learnt through physical suffering. If its not the explanation for all, it is for me. On many days of intense pain I have felt alienated from God, abandoned and all alone. Pain seems to do that. Physical suffering teaches us what it would feel like to be spiritually cut off from God’s presence forever. Once you understand it, it becomes a deterrent to sinning.

Just being taken out of God’s presence in which we lived for eons and placed in another sphere of existence has an effect on all of us, even if we don’t realize it. A French philosopher and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said something profound once: “We are spiritual beings having a human experience and not humans having a spiritual experience”. Because of this truth, we are all hungering and seeking that spiritual connection we once had with God, even if we don’t realise it. Some of us who do not find it in the right place, seek devastating counterfeits which lead them to self-destruction. The truth remains, we are all seeking God.

The good news is that there is hope…..for all of us. There is a spiritual umbilical cord that ties us to the origin of our existence and ensures we do not have to be lost forever. I cannot think of a greater happiness and joy than being in the presence of a God of love for all eternity. This was the Saviour’s primary motivation for His eternal sacrifice…..that we be with the Father forever.

Before He went to the Garden and the cross, the Saviour was certain that the Father would be with Him during His suffering. He said as much to his disciples (John 8:29; 16:32). Imagine His surprise when the Father withdrew and He was left alone. This was needful for a couple of reasons:  1. where there is sin, which was upon the Saviour during the Atonement, God’s spirit withdraws (Mosiah 2:36);  and 2. so the glory would be exclusively His and He could say, “I have trodden the winepress alone…” (D&C 133:50).

This, however, is the primary reason why the Father withdrew. It was imperative that the Saviour understood spiritual death from first-hand experience and what it would be like for us, sinners, to be cut off from the presence of God forever. For this He endured the cross until He could say ‘it is finished’ (John 19:30). The Atonement overcame spiritual death and redeemed us from the Fall.

Considering the closeness and connection He had with His Father, I cannot imagine the devastation He felt during this ordeal of alienation but this too He was willing to suffer for our sake. This is the God we worship, this is the God we love. All honour and praise be to His name forever. 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Uplift the World by Eva Koleva Timothy)