Study and Understand

In her talk, Rise Up in Strength, Sisters in Zion, Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson said, "We need to study and understand His Atonement and how to apply it daily." This goes well with some counsel a friends gave me in response to a recent blog post. After I expressed confusion about how the Atonement works, a friend of mine told me that the scriptures explain the Atonement fairly well -- just in bits and pieces scattered throughout the scriptures. Understanding the Atonement may be possible, but it will require diligent study.

I plan to study the Atonement some time in the future, if not in the near future. Sister Oscarson said that "there are answers to the questions being asked," and she gave the sisters a tip on how to find those answers: "Listen to the recent messages from our leaders." I have been doing that, but not with the Atonement specifically in mind. Perhaps I should revisit recent General Conference talks, looking for explanations of how the Atonement works. I'm not truly confident that I'll find a clear and complete explanation, but I might be able to find some clues.

As incomprehensible as the Atonement seems to be, I am beginning to believe that it may be possible, in some incomplete, mortal way, to understand it. I would like to have a greater understanding of the Atonement, especially since it's so essential to my salvation. It'd be nice to know how it works. But even if I never figure it out, I can at least figure out how to use it. If I can at least gain a more complete understanding of how to repent and be forgiven, I feel like that would be worth taking the time to study it out. I believe that it may be possible to understand the Atonement, and I know that it's possible to understand repentance, and those seem, to me, to be fairly important concepts to grasp.