A Gospel of Joy

It's the end of another glorious BYU semester and the end of a chapter in my life. By this time next year I will be out in the mission field preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, a gospel whose message embodies all truth and is all love. How thankful I am that I have been able to strengthen my testimony of the Savior this semester in New Testament. I do not believe I have known Jesus Christ as well as I do now after this class where His life and the enviroment and circumstances of His life were put into context. He was indeed a man, but Jesus Christ is also our Savior, Redeemer, Mediator, the Prince of Peace, and is all good, all love, and embodies perfection.

How grateful I am for this Gospel that brings so much joy, peace, and happiness into my life.
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In Humilty, Our Savior

At this Christmas time I reflect on the birth of Jesus Christ, and marvel at His coming. Our Savior, our Redeemer, with His never-ending kingdoms of glory and His majesty came to earth, not in that majesty, but in quite the opposite fashion. The creator of this earth came to earth in the most humble of ways. Born in a manager where sheep and cows lived, our Savior made His entrance. He began His mortal ministry not in majesty but in meekness and as a helpless baby. He had the glory of being the Son of God, yet He came to earth as a pauper (not a prince), an obscure child from the little-known town of Nazareth.

This testifies to me the true power of our Savior and our Heavenly Father - that even the most humble of people from the most modest of circumstances have the ability to rise to the greatest of heights, the pinnacle of nobilty.

Christ is our exemplar, our example. He was once a helpless child, and now he is the Redeemer of each of us, without whom, we would all remain helpless children.

The Atonement and Forgiveness

I am preparing to serve a mission, and as I am filling out the required papers and having the required interviews with my bishop and stake president my mind is constantly on the Atonement of Christ and His forgiveness. In my short life so far there have been many choices that I have made that have not been the right ones. None of them have been large enough to keep me from being able to serve a mission, but of course, I still have a wide variety of them. Sometimes I wonder how Jesus Christ could have stayed so clean, so pure, so good, without faltering once. I mean, it seems like it is everyday, even hourly that I falter. How is it that I could ever be worthy of His presence, of His goodness?

But then I think of His purpose -- to heal us, to cleanse our souls through His perfection. He came here to die for us so that we too, through Him, could receive forgiveness and become perfect. But do we sometimes forget Him and show a lack of forgiveness even to myself? Do I?

From now on out I will try to be more like Christ in that way: in forgiving myself. Of course it will be important to pray and repent, but I must be accepting of Christ's Atonement and forgiveness and show myself the same mercy.

We are not perfect. But He is. And through His perfection we can become perfect ourselves. Christ sees that potential in us. Do we?