The Atonement

Ive been studying the Atonement for the past year or so.
A dear friend of mine shared this with me.

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 implication 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 and 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 gas chambers of Dacau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism... his last recorded words to His disciples were, "And lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world." What does that mean? It means He understands your mothers pain when your five years old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your 5Th grader, when your daughter calls to say the new baby has Down 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 your hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your 50Th wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that.

Chieko N Okazaki