In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Christ poured out His whole soul - His blood, sweat, and tears - for the Salvation of us all. Our Savior’s blood, sweat, and tears symbolize our Savior’s and our separate and joint contributions to the bringing about of the salvation and exaltation of God’s children. It is because of Jesus Christ’s blood and His ultimate and infinite sacrifice that the Plan of Salvation is possible. Jesus Christ’s blood represents an undeserved and scarcely hoped for gift of compassion and mercy and grace. Our Savior spilled His blood willingly without any expectation for reciprocity or repayment. He performed the Atonement because He loved us more than He loved His own life, and that miraculous gift of forgiveness and enabling power is available to each of us. The only limits that can be placed upon Christ’s Atonement are those of our own making. We have the choice to take as much or as little of our Savior’s redeeming and healing power as we will. To take full advantage of the Atonement requires work. We must put off the natural man, rein in our impulses towards excess, press forward through the mists of darkness and ignore or resist the temptations that do so easily beset us. God told Adam that it was by the sweat of his brow that he must eat his bread. Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life. It requires sweat and effort and hard work to shake off the influences of the world and grab onto our Savior and His grace with both hands. Our sweat does not allow us to earn access to the Atonement, because Christ does not turn any away that would reach out to Him. Rather, our sweat and our effort silences or banishes the parts of ourselves that cry out that we don’t want or need His heavenly help. Christ’s blood and our sweat operate somewhat on distinct, parallel tracks. Christ’s sacrifice and our effort are separate, unequal gifts. Where we meet together is through our tears. Although we have abundant and irrefutable evidence of God’s love for us, we do not always choose to obey His commandments, even when we know that they are designed specifically for our good. This causes our Heavenly Father and our Savior to weep with sorrow both that we would choose to reject and turn away from them, and because in so doing we are going to heap more sorrow and misery on our heads. And if we are not past feeling, it causes us to weep as well. If only we were thinking clearly, if only we had chosen to be wise, if only we had remembered what great things our Lord has done for us, or how much sorrow we brought upon ourselves the last time we chose poorly, maybe we wouldn’t have erred one more time. On the other hand, sometimes through no fault of our own we go through painful trials and challenges in our lives. We may be doing everything right. We may be putting in the sweat and the work to fully apply the Atonement in our lives, and yet still, tragedy strikes and knocks us down into the dirt. We know that God loves us and that He has all power and yet He allows us to suffer. And so we weep that our loving Heavenly Father allows this pain to fall upon us. And for His part, our Heavenly Father weeps too. He knows so much more perfectly just how fully and completely He could take away all of our pain and stop everything bad from ever happening to us. But He knows that He cannot. And so He weeps for us as well. These tears bring us and our Heavenly Father and Savior together. It is something that we can both do together. We may not feel sorrow as deeply or as keenly as our Savior, but we can be sure that to whatever depth of grief or pain we have sunk, He has sunk lower still. We should find comfort and hope in the fact that our Heavenly Father doesn’t swoop in and magically fix all of our problems immediately but instead chooses to allow us to feel that sorrow and grief and pain fully and completely, all the while holding us in His arms and weeping and feeling those same hard feelings right alongside us. There is wisdom and understanding that we find in grief and pain that we can find nowhere else, not least because although we cannot match our Savior blood for blood, we can at least match Him tear for tear. The blood, what Christ does for us, the sweat, what we do for Him, and the tears, what we do together sums up the beautiful, intricately woven love our Father and Savior feel for us and the love we feel for Them as our hearts are woven together.
