Mormon Musings

Only He could have carried it all.  I thank the Savior personally for bearing all which I added to His hemorrhaging at every pore for all of humanity on Gethsemane.  I thank Him for bearing what I added to the decibels of His piercing soul-cry atone Calvary. Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, May 1988, p. 9

Being sinless Himself, Jesus  could not have suffered for per sonal  sin nor known what such   a gony  is—unless He took upon Hi m  our sins, not only to redeem  us and to save us, but also in  order that He might know how " according  to the flesh . . . to   succor his people according to   their infirmities." (Alma 7: 12.)  Neal A. Maxwell (All These Things Shall Gi ve  Thee Experience, p.  35.)

Mortal experience points evermore to the Atonement of Jesus Christ as the central act of all human history.  The more I learn and experience, the more unselfish, stunning and encompassing His Atonement becomes! Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, May 1997, p. 12

In 1979 a large passenger jet with 257 people on board left New Zealand for a sightseeing flight to Antarctica and back. Unknown to the pilots, however, someone had modified the flight coordinates by a mere two degrees. This error placed the aircraft 28 miles (45 km) to the east of where the pilots assumed they were. As they approached Antarctica, the pilots descended to a lower altitude to give the passengers a better look at the landscape. Although both were experienced pilots, neither had made this particular flight before, and they had no way of knowing that the incorrect coordinates had placed them directly in the path of Mount Erebus, an active volcano that rises from the frozen landscape to a height of more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m). As the pilots flew onward, the white of the snow and ice covering the volcano blended with the white of the clouds above, making it appear as though they were flying over flat ground. By the time the instruments sounded the warning that the groun

Life has its share of some fear and some failure. Sometimes things fall short, don’t quite measure up. Sometimes in both personal and public life, we are seemingly left without strength to go on. Sometimes people fail us, or economies and circumstance fail us, and life with its hardship and heartache can leave us feeling very alone. But when such difficult moments come to us, I testify that there is one thing which will never, ever fail us. One thing alone will stand the test of all time, of all tribulation, all trouble, and all transgression. One thing only never faileth—and that is the pure love of Christ. “I remember,” Moroni cries to the Savior of the world, “that thou hast said that thou hast loved the world, even unto the laying down of thy life for the world. … “Now I know,” he writes, “that this love which thou hast had for the children of men is charity.” ( Ether 12:33–34 .) Having watched a dispensation die and an entire civilization destroy itself, Moroni quotes hi

Mortal experience points evermore to the Atonement of  Jesus Christ  as the central act of all human history. The more I learn and experience, the more unselfish, stunning, and encompassing His Atonement becomes! When we take Jesus’ yoke upon us, this admits us eventually to what Paul called the “fellowship of [ Christ ’s] sufferings” ( Philip. 3:10 ). Whether illness or aloneness, injustice or rejection, etc., our comparatively small-scale sufferings, if we are meek, will sink into the very marrow of the soul. We then better appreciate not only Jesus’ sufferings for us, but also His matchless character, moving us to greater adoration and even emulation. Alma revealed that Jesus knows how to succor us in the midst of our griefs and sicknesses precisely because Jesus has already borne our griefs and sicknesses (see  Alma 7:11–12 ). He knows them firsthand; thus His empathy is earned. Of course, we do not comprehend it fully any more than we understand how He bore all mortal sins,

Now, brethren, can we fight against and subdue ourselves? That is the greatest difficulty we ever encountered, and the most arduous warfare we over engaged in. This will apply most perfectly to the brethren who have gathered with the Saints. When we are out in the world we preach faith and repentance, so that the Saints bring the knowledge of first principles with them to the gathering-place. Your next step is to enter into the study of this. A man may learn letters and study all the various branches of scholastic education to the day of his death; but if he does not attain to strict self discipline, his learning will not amount to much. The catalogue of man’s discipline he must compile himself: he cannot be guided by any rule that others may lay down, but is placed under the necessity of tracing it himself through every avenue of his life. He is obliged to catechise and train himself, for he knows his own disposition the best—its fortified and unfortified parts. He is therefore the