Take It Personally

Those talks about prophets are going to have to wait. The next talk after Elder Robert D. Hales' talk about the Godhead is a talk by Elder James J. Hamula about The Sacrament and the Atonement. This is a really good talk, and I definitely need to blog about it at least once. From just my first skimming through of the talk, two paragraphs strongly stood out to me. They're about the Sacramental bread and water, respectively, and they talk about what the bread and water represent and what it means when we partake of them.

With torn and broken bread, we signify that we remember the physical body of Jesus Christ—a body that was buffeted with pains, afflictions, and temptations of every kind, a body that bore a burden of anguish sufficient to bleed at every pore, a body whose flesh was torn and whose heart was broken in crucifixion. We signify our belief that while that same body was laid to rest in death, it was raised again to life from the grave, never again to know disease, decay, or death. And in taking the bread to ourselves, we acknowledge that, like Christ’s mortal body, our bodies will be released from the bonds of death, rise triumphantly from the grave, and be restored to our eternal spirits.

With a small cup of water, we signify that we remember the blood Jesus spilled and the spiritual suffering He endured for all mankind. We remember the agony that caused great drops of blood to fall in Gethsemane. We remember the bruising and scourging He endured at the hands of His captors. We remember the blood He spilled from His hands, feet, and side while at Calvary. And we remember His personal reflection on His suffering: “How sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not.” In taking the water to ourselves, we acknowledge that His blood and suffering atoned for our sins and that He will remit our sins as we embrace and accept the principles and ordinances of His gospel.

 The caption of the photo I shared above, in case it's too small to read, says "Think about what the Savior did. Think about what you are doing. (See D&C 19: 16-17.)" The scripture that they reference reads:

For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;

But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;

 Without going into too much detail about the kind of suffering we'll experience if we don't repent (this blog post isn't really about us), I want us to recall what suffering the Lord went through for us, each of us personally, and what we have to do now to make sure His suffering doesn't go to waste. He endured ultimate agony for us. He took our sins upon Himself and suffered the pains of hell for them. In doing so, He experienced pain so severe that I'm sure it would have killed a mortal man. He suffered all that pain for us, expressly so that we wouldn't have to suffer it ourselves.

Now, we have a choice, thousands of choices, really, and when we think about what Jesus did and why He did it, those choices become a whole lot easier. I used to not want to sing the chorus of I Stand All Amazed, because I didn't think it was "Wonderful that He should cared for me enough to die for me." I thought it was terrible that He had to. What would be even more terrible, though, would be for Him to have suffered so much for me, just for me to let that suffering go to waste.

Jesus experienced terrible pain for us in Gethsemane, but He also feels great emotional pain for us when we don't repent. I once thought that I could keep Jesus from having experienced the pain of my sins by not repenting of them, so I could take that burden off of Him and carry it myself, but it doesn't work like that. He suffered for every sin I've ever committed, and will ever commit, whether I repent of them or not. What I can do reduce His suffering is refrain from committing more sins. His Atonement makes it possible for us to repent, to change, to become better people. As we take the Sacrament, we should think about what Jesus did for us and what we should do (or refrain from doing) to thank Him, to take advantage of the Atonement, and to not make it worse. Taking the Sacrament isn't just to help us remember and be thankful for the Atonement. It also reminds us of what we can and have to do to show our thanks.