The Gift

A couple/3 months ago, I left a child of mine in a different city to pursue greater things.

It has been a good (?), but at times, difficult experience for both of us.

She's a good child.  Not a perfect child, but a really, really good child.  That's why it has been so hard to understand why a professor has decided to harass (yes, harass) her for really, no good reason.  He has done everything in his power to try to make her quit.  He has berated her in class.  He has found fault with pretty much everything she has done.  He has given certain instructions that she has followed, only to have it "condemned" as wrong because he has contradicted himself on said given instructions.

This is not just from a mother who is prone to perceiving injustices to her child.  It has also been noticed by others in her class.  That he obviously has some special bone to pick with my child, and no one can figure out why.  Because she really is a good, hardworking, smart person.  And it makes no sense.

Outside of class, she has to spend so much of her time working on school work, leaving her little to no time to attend activities at church, outside of Sundays, with others her age and get to know them.

If you're a parent, I don't need to tell you that even though I know it's a necessary experience, it doesn't make it any easier to watch her have to go through it.

Why do I choose to share this family saga today?  Because as hard as this has been to let her go through, it is beyond my comprehension to think of our Heavenly Father to watch and allow his perfect Son to pay for all the unimaginable sins, wrongs and injustices of this world.  Alone.  Without a friend to His name at His most needful hour.

Maybe Elder Holland can explain it for me:

"I am a father, inadequate to be sure, but I cannot comprehend the burden it must have been for God in His heaven to witness the deep suffering and Crucifixion of His Beloved Son in such a manner. His every impulse and instinct must have been to stop it, to send angels to intervene—but He did not intervene. He endured what He saw because it was the only way that a saving, vicarious payment could be made for the sins of all His other children from Adam and Eve to the end of the world. I am eternally grateful for a perfect Father and His perfect Son, neither of whom shrank from the bitter cup nor forsook the rest of us who are imperfect, who fall short and stumble, who too often miss the mark.

"In that most burdensome moment of all human history, with blood appearing at every pore and an anguished cry upon His lips, Christ sought Him whom He had always sought—His Father. “Abba,” He cried, “Papa,” or from the lips of a younger child, “Daddy.” ²¹

 

This is such a personal moment it almost seems a sacrilege to cite it. A Son in unrelieved pain, a Father His only true source of strength, both of them staying the course, making it through the night—together."

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

April, 1999 General Conference

It's grateful I am for this Easter Sunday, this Good News Sunday.  

"He is not here: for he is risen.."