“ And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities. Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.” (Alma 7:12-13). It is perhaps not too uncommon for us to imagine, when we are thinking about our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, that They are comfortably ensconced on their lofty thrones on high, surrounded by numberless concourses of angels, wrapped in eternal bliss. If we are feeling particularly resentful about the blood, sweat, and tears that are pouring out of us as we labor our way through our trials and adversities, we might even imagine Them kicking back in lawn chairs and sipping on lemonades as They look down on us as we fight tooth and nail just to hold onto what little sanity we have left in our efforts to survive even one more hour. In the agony of our souls, we might cry out, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? The thing is, our Savior is not a remote and disinterested third party. He suffered according to the flesh. He has skin in the game. If He asks us to walk through Hell, He does so by saying Come Follow Me as He walks through the fire and brimstone in front of us. When He invites us to take His yoke upon us, it is not only so that we will stop trying to bear our burdens alone but to let Him shoulder some of the weight. Adding His strength to our own meager efforts is invaluable. But equally precious is the knowledge that God isn’t in the Judge’s box or cheering from the bleachers or even on the sidelines coaching us, but rather He is strapped in right next to us, straining against the same yoke, pulling the same heavy load one step at a time. On our very worst day, it seems like nothing that anyone could do or say could possibly make the situation any less horrible, but maybe knowing that our Savior tested all of these tortures and pains and agonies and evils on Himself first before He allowed us to take a crack at them can at least give us the solace that God has not nor will He ever ask us to go through something that He has not gone through Himself, except on an infinitely more intense scale. Maybe if Jesus Christ can go through our worst nightmare and hold onto His divinity and His humanity and His love while at the same time going through the worst nightmares of every other person who has ever or will ever live, then maybe we can find the courage and the humility and the bloody-minded stubbornness to endure the trials to which we are subjected, and to take upon us our Savior’s yoke, and learn of Him and do our best to navigate our crises with even the tiniest fraction of the integrity and poise and tenacious hope that He exhibited during His darkest hour.
