Tadd R. Callister wrote:
“No matter how lost the world at large may be, no matter how depraved or degenerate it may become, there is yet a bright light of hope for those individuals who have faith in Christ. Those who focus on him and his atoning sacrifice, who let these glorious truths rest in their minds continually, will find Christ’s power to lift the human soul transcends even the weightiest burdens the world may thrust upon them. . . .
“No mortal can cry out, “He does not understand my plight, for my trials are unique.” There is nothing outside the scope of the Savior’s experience. As Elder Maxwell observed, “None of us can tell Christ anything about depression.”5 As a result of his mortal experience, culminating in the Atonement, the Savior knows, understands, and feels every human condition, every human woe, and every human loss. He can comfort us as no other. He can listen as no other. There is no hurt He cannot sooth, rejection he cannot assuage, loneliness he cannot console. Whatever affliction the world casts at us, he has a remedy of superior healing power. Truman Madsen spoke forcefully of the Savior’s comforting powers:
“No human encounter, no tragic loss, no spiritual failure is beyond the pale of his present knowledge and compassion. . . . And any theology which teaches that there were some thing[s] he did not suffer is [a] falsification of his life. He knew them all. Why? That he might succor, which is to say comfort and heal, this people. He knew the full nature of human struggle.”6
Man’s needs, however onerous or multitudinous they may be, will never outdistance God’s succoring powers. That is part of the miracle of his redemption. He is always there. He never tells us not to come back home. He is never found in short supply of anxious concern. He never wants for a remedy. The Savior’s love and compassion will always circumscribe every real and imaginable need of man.
We rejoice in his glorious invitation and promise: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). This, too, is part of the power and blessing of the Atonement, urged them to “plant this word” in their hearts, and then concluded, “And then may God grant unto you that your burdens many be light, through the joy of his Son” (Alma 33:23).
How much easier to follow and love that leader who has felt all that we have felt and more—who not only sympathizes, but empathizes with our cause. Even though the Savior may have known all things in the Spirit, even the travails of the flesh, the fact that he took upon him a body of flesh and bones, and thereafter the indignities of man, increase both our affection for him and our ability to identify with him. Elder Maxwell quotes G.K. Chesterson in this regard: “No mysterious monarch, hidden in his starry pavilion at the base of the caustic campaign, is in the least like that celestial chivalry of the Captain who carries his five wounds in the front of the battle.”7 It is such a “wounded” leader we are fortunate to have. It is such a wounded leader who succors us in our wounds. ~Tadd R. Callister, The Infinite Atonement (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2000) 422-24 (pocket book edition)
Notes:
5. Maxwell, “Enduring Well,” 10.
6. Madsen, Christ and the Inner Life, 5,12.
7. Maxwell, More Excellent Way, 12.
