Elm and I were asked to give talks at Church, Easter Sunday. Here is mine :o)
Good afternoon Brothers and Sisters. I would like to give a mini introduction of our family.
We are the Jorgensens. I am Sarah, I was born and raised in Denmark, that’s in Europe. Oh, and we speak Danish not Dutch…. Think pasties. My husband is Elm, his the blond guy who plays the organ. We have to little girls: Arilyn who is 6 and Rhiannon who is almost 4. We are civilians and have lived here for 7 years… and staying until we croak.
The Bishop has asked me to talk about finding joy in the Atonement. So that is what I will do. I pray that the spirit will be here today to help me convey my thought to you this day, and that it will be done in the way the Lord wants.
The way we respond to trials can have a great effect on whether they become roadblocks in our lives or expressways to learning and growth. When we anguish over difficulties, the experience only serves to weigh us down. But remembering that these trials are part of the great plan of happiness helps us to see them as opportunities to grow and learn.
As children of a loving God, we accepted our Fathers plan to obtain a physical body, gain earthly experiences. And qualify to return to His presence and enjoy eternal life. In fact, we “shouted for joy” at the chance to participate in this “plan of happiness” (Alma 42:8, 16). Here on earth, there is a lot of joy, but there are also times of trials, misfortune and grief.
The quest for joy in mortality began with Adam and Eve. 2 Nephi 2:25 says:”Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy.” They chose sorrow and death so they could also choose joy and exaltation. Eve said to Adam, “where it not for our transgression we… never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all obedient” Moses 5:11). Our Savior’s Atonement was a choice for joy.
If happiness is the object of our existence, some may ask, why isn’t life more pleasant? Why do we suffer pain and heartbreak? Why is there so much sorrow?
Joy is an emotion of the spirit. It comes through righteous living. It is not a casual or shallow feeling, ever. If we equate fun and pleasure with happiness, we may think pain must always be equated with unhappiness. But that is not true. Joy is not a stranger to pain. We may not feel deeply enough to know joy unless our hearts have been hollowed out by sorrow. A heart may not be big enough to know real joy until it has been stretched and pulled by trials and hard things. In 2 Nephi 2:23 we find this phrase: “having no joy, for they knew no misery.” Our capacity to feel joy actually increases as we righteously endure our pain.
A common misunderstanding among members of the Church is that if we strive with all our might to live the commandments, nothing bad will happen to us. We may believe if we are married in the temple, our marriage will automatically be heaven on earth, or if we live the Word of Wisdom, we will never get sick. But the truth is that bad things may happen to the best of people.
Trials are a fundamental part of the plan of life. But that does not mean we have no hope for happiness in mortality. The key to happiness here and eternal joy hereafter is the atonement of Jesus Christ.
Everything that Jesus did during His ministry is part of the Atonement. He taught the people, blessed and healed the sick. All of that has part in the Atonment.
Through the principles and ordinances of the gospel, the Atonement leaves us all free to learn from sorrow, to grow from experience – and to find joy in the process. The path to happiness, the Prophet Joseph Smith taught, “is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness and keeping all the commandments of God…. In obedience there is joy and peace unspotted, unalloyed; and as God has designed our happiness….. He never will institute an ordinance or give a commandment….. which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become the recipients of His law and ordinances.”
The purposes of Adversary
Apostle Orson F. Whitney (1855-1931) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, explained:” No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire.”
Trials give us opportunities to show the Lord and ourselves that we will be faithful. We can choose to feel sorry for ourselves and ask “why me?” or we can grow from our trials, increase our faith in the Lord, and ask “How can I be faithful in the midst of this trial?” We can let adversity break us down and make us bitter, or we can let it refine us and make us stronger. We can allow adversity to lead us to drift away from the things that matter most, or we can use it as a stepping stone to grow closer to things of eternal worth.
Trials can teach us that faith in God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ is the source of inner strength.
One of the purposes of trials is to help us come to know Christ, understand His teachings in our minds, feel them in our hearts, and live them in our lives. Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained that God loves us perfectly and “would not require (us) to experience a moment more of difficulty than is absolutely needed for (our) personal benefit or for that of those (we) love.”
When we turn to Christ, we will not only find the comfort we seek, but in so doing we will also gain an increased testimony of the reality of the Savior and His Atonement, which can heal all suffering. We often speak of the Atonement in terms of relief from sin and guilt. But the Atonement is more.
The Atonement can heal the effects of all pain and affliction on mortality. God lets us have difficult days, months or lives so we can grow from these experiences.
Christ felt every kind of pain in the Garden of Gethsemane. Pain from illness, pain of losing a loved one. He felt despair. He knows these feelings, and therefore understands exactly how we feel when we are going through life’s hard times. Who better to turn to for comfort and understanding. And He NEVER gets tired of listening to us.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks said “Sometimes we are ‘healed’ by being given the strength or understanding or patience to bear the burdens places upon us.”
We all have trials. And nobody ever has the exact same trials.
We have had – let’s call it an event filled month. Those first two weeks right after Elm’s surgery, sure were something.
They involved: Knee surgery, major swelling, 1 trip to the ER, 1 to the Urgent care that same day. A flat tire, including a busted rim, another trip to the ER. A chip in the windshield that turned into a crack…. All the while trying to find some way of controlling his pain from the swelling.
I really had the feeling that everything that could go wrong would. We added a vacuum that won’t work and a dishwasher that only works on the bottom.
A friend of mine posted something on Facebook that really helped. It went something like this: “Today was a really rough day, but I am grateful for it, because it has made me stronger.” We all know the saying, ;”What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Well I decided that I wasn’t going to let these things do me in.
I knew I wasn’t doing it alone. We had wonderful friends that were ready to help when we needed it. And I knew that my Savior was with me through it all. He knew exactly what I was going through, and was there to help me get through it.
And that is what gives me joy…. Through His Atonement.
I say this in the name of Jesus Christ,
Amen.
