He Sent His Son

Graduate school has been a stretching, proving, uncomfortable, and learning experience. It’s hard to describe; there is a lot going on, AND you’re learning about complex real-world issues.

Sometimes it feels confusing and dissonant with the world I used to know. The way I used to see and view things.

“Wait, there is so much suffering in the world, but God is still loving? Still merciful? Still omni-benevolent? How can that be?”

I am grateful I haven’t struggled too much with this thought, but I know that added complexity can instigate a faith crisis, or at least a faith concern.

I am reminded of a poem found etched onto walls of a cellar in Cologne during WWII (originally thought to be walls of a concentration camp; see here for the story):

I believe in the sun, though it be dark;
I believe in God, though He be silent;
I believe in neighborly love, though it be unable to reveal itself.

Translated a different way:

I believe in the sun, even in the darkness.
I believe in God, even if God is silent.
I believe in compassion, even when it must remain hidden.

Written as lyrics to a beautiful song by Mark Miller, “I Believe:”

I believe in the sun even when the sun is not shining. / I believe in love even when I don’t feel it. / I believe in God even when God is silent.

Click here to watch my institute choir sing this song in 2023. I’m on the left of the video in a purple dress.

Amidst dangerous and life-threatening circumstances, someone wrote these words of tremendous faith: “I believe in God, though He be silent.”

I’ve pondered this dissonance that graduate school introduces, the questions that remain after all is said and done: “How are both of these truths possible at the same time? How does so much suffering exist in the world, and how is God still good?”

For me, I’ve found an answer that satisfies every question.

God sent His Son.

The answer is Jesus Christ.

That’s how.

That’s how God is still good even though suffering is prevalent in the world we live in.

Chieko Okazaki said in her book, Lighten Up,

“We know that on some level Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It’s our faith that he experienced everything—absolutely everything. Sometimes we don’t think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don’t experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually.

“That means Jesus knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer—how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student-body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked, and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.

“Let me go further. There is nothing you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion. His last recorded words to his disciples were, ‘And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world’ Matthew 28:20). He understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down’s syndrome… He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children who ever come are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week… He knows all that. He’s been there. He’s been lower than all that.”

The scriptures teach this too: D&C 122:8 says, “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?”

We know that because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, there is hope. There is light. There is healing.

So when questions arise, I find comfort that God sent Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son, to perform the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

So how is it fair?

Because He sent His Son.

How is God good in a world full of suffering?

Because He sent His Son.

I sent a thought like this to a friend (I put it on page 2 if you want to see it), and she reminded me of the children’s song, He Sent His Son.

How could the Father tell the world
Of love and tenderness?
He sent his Son, a newborn babe
With peace and holiness
How could the Father show the world
The pathway we should go?
He sent his Son to walk with men
On earth, that we may know
How could the Father tell the World
Of sacrifice, of death?
His sent his Son to die for us
And rise with living breath
What does the Father ask of us?
What do the scriptures say?
Have faith, have hope, live like his Son
Help others on their way

To take inspiration from my post I Get It Now, here is my updated message of hope:

I don’t know what’s going on in your life right now.

I don’t know what’s happened. What’s been unfair. What’s been infuriatingly unfair.

I don’t know why your heart feels broken, why it feels like it might have always been broken, why it feels like it will always be broken.

I don’t know why you’ve experienced the things you have, especially those moments where you cried out for someone—anyone—to hear your cries.

I don’t know why you’ve suffered the way you have.

What I do know is that God knows.

Your pain isn’t for nothing.

It mattered. It matters. It will continue to matter.

I also know that everything will be okay.

It will be better than okay.

In fact, Elder L. Tom Perry (and many others, including President Nelson) said, “The best is yet to come.”

It’s a quote I’ve shared before, but it’s soooo good, so here it is again:

Jesus specializes in the seemingly impossible. He came here to make the impossible possible, the irredeemable redeemable, to heal the unhealable, to right the unrightable, to promise the unpromisable. And He’s really good at it. In fact, He’s perfect at it. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Healer, amen.
–Elder Kearon

Healing is possible.

Because He sent His Son.

Everything will be okay.

Because He sent His Son.

The best is yet to come.

Because

He sent His Son.