Talk #8: Ris'n with Healing in His Wings

Talk #8 – The Atonement: Ris’n With Healing in His Wings

“All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.” So says the missionary handbook Preach My Gospel. Brothers and sisters, that Atonement is real. And it is there, constantly, with the hand of the Lord, reaching out to rescue, to recover, to heal. It can catch any falling soul, destroy any sin, wipe clean any manner of disease, fill any hole or gap or wound, lift the fallen heart and fix the broken soul. I begin with that testimony. I bear witness to the power of the Atonement. I know it can do all those things because it did so to me. I am here today, I write here, I speak here, I testify here, not out of an intellectual understanding of doctrine, nor in theory or principle, but because Jesus Christ, through the Atonement, redeemed my soul, and lifted me up and out from darkness into light. He saved me. He healed me.

Allow me a secular demonstration of this principle in the form of a pop culture parable found in Christopher Nolan’s Batman film The Dark Knight. Throughout the film, the Satanic villain the Joker has been dueling Batman, our hero, in a battle for the soul of Gotham City. The Joker’s primary goal is to corrupt, to instigate chaos in the city and bring everyone down to the level of savages, to be wicked and evil as he is. At first the Joker tries to destroy Batman’s moral righteousness, but when he fails at that he goes for a different target: Harvey Dent, the district attorney who is also a hero figure, though in a much more legal and procedural way: he is a source of hope that the rampant crime in the city could be stopped. In the end, however, the Joker succeeds in bringing down Harvey Dent, the symbolic soul of Gotham, and Dent becomes a fallen man, killing five people in a spree out of revenge for his fiancee’s death, which the Joker brought about. As a result, Batman and Police Commissioner Jim Gordon face a  terrible quandary: if the people of Gotham knew about Dent’s corruption, he could no longer be a face of inspiration to the city and all the progress they’ve made in saving the city will be lost. It is in Batman’s solution to this problem that we see the pieces of the Atonement fall into place: Batman decides to take the crimes of Harvey Dent, the fallen man, upon himself, and be blamed for what he did, so that the Joker cannot win, and so the soul of Gotham can be saved. In short, brothers and sisters, the Christ figure, takes the sins of fallen mankind, and the punishment thereof, upon himself, so that the devil does not win, and claim the souls of the imperfect people for himself. We live, and we are free, and we can rise up, because Christ took the fall. That is the Atonement.

As Batman explains his decision to Jim Gordon, he tells him, “Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.” Brothers and sisters, such is Christ’s view, and so too is our faith rewarded with forgiveness when we look to Christ and repent, and thus begin the transformation process made possible by the Atonement.

Our decision to approach God humbly and repent is the trigger that starts the transformation, the seed that, through the power of the Atonement, grows into a tree-like testimony that has the potential to bear much fruit. Fruit that fills the eater with light and life, that represents the love of God, that contains more seeds that can bring forth their own likeness. Seeds that can grow more trees, bearing more fruit, and on and on and on. Note, brothers and sisters, that a simple handful of seeds can produce an entire field full of fruit and grain. That is the ratio of how much we contribute compared to how much we are blessed by the Lord, what we get out of the Atonement compared to what we put in. That is the concept of eternal lives.

And we would do well to remember that it is God who gave us the handful of seeds to begin with. He gave us the seeds, and with our faith we plant them. All of it represents the love of God, the love of our Savior. The very reason the Plan of Happiness was organized, the reason our Heavenly Father has done all that He has for us, the reason He wants us to fulfill our potential to become like Him. The reason our Savior went through the excruciating pain of Gethsemane, “how sore [we] know not, how exquisite [we] know not, yea, how hard to bear [we] know not.” D&C 19:18 — “Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit — and would that I might not drink the butter cup, and shrink — ”

Brothers and sisters, there is a dash there, not a period. It is an unfinished sentence. I want you to take note of that significant detail. Stop and reflect on what it might mean. To me it is as if our perfect and loving Savior could not bear to finish his sentence, the memory of the pain was so great, a pain that literally halted our Savior’s speech. He endured such pain, and “suffered these things for all, that [we] might not suffer if [we] would repent.” And, as Brother Adam Olson points out in the September 2012 Ensign, “He knew of the depth of iniquity that would be connected to the human family. He understood the awful, inestimable price He would be required to pay...And knowing all, He still decided [we were] worth it. No matter how short I think I fall in comparison to others, no matter how little value others see in me, Jesus felt I was worth the price He had to pay.”

In The Dark Knight, Commissioner Gordon’s young son, present with him in the final scene, asks his father why Batman is running away, saying, so profoundly, “He didn’t do anything wrong.” Brothers and sisters, Christ, too, never did anything wrong. So why does He bear the brunt of our sins? Why did He have to go through the tortuous suffering in our stead? Gordon answers his son: “Because he can take it.”

Because he can take it. Christ, the Son of God, a god himself in mortal raiment, is the only Being who could have sacrificed so. An infinite and eternal sacrifice, the sacrifice of a god. And, knowing this, knowing that He alone could do it, He did it. He bore our sins, our trials and temptations, our torments and tragedies, each and every one of them, just so He could understand us, just so He could see us, and be with us, and embrace us again. Just so we could be clean enough to be with Him again, and make us whole, and make us rejoice in never-ending happiness.

He did all this because of love. And because of this love he has offered us the opportunity to repent. Mosiah 26:30 – “Yea, and as often as my people repent will I forgive them their trespasses against me.” Take a second to think about that. Have you ever held a grudge? Usually these are for small, petty things. Occasionally they will be for big things. Either way, it is hard to look past them and forgive. Can you imagine being a perfect being, a being who has never done a wrong thing in their life, nor anything hurtful or mean-spirited or cruel, and who has given all that he is capable of giving, even his very life and every iota of love that is in him in attempt to save others, to offer them an eternity of everlasting happiness? And can you imagine him being mocked and rejected and hated and fought against by those same people? And the perfect, incomprehensible love that Being has in continuing to reach out to them, in having his mighty, saving arm stretched out still, and finally in forgiving those people when they realize they were wrong, and again offering them everything he had offered before?

        These are the lengths He would go to retrieve his children from darkness and damnation. Can we understand that level of unconditional love? I don’t think we can right now. Perhaps only a parent can come close to understanding it. But despite our inability to fully conceive of such love, we can benefit from it. Even though we don’t deserve it, even though we are all sinners, falling short of the mark, even though we fail and fall again and again and again — His arm is reached out still, and we can repent, and turn to Him. Even when we are in a state of rebellion and spiritual darkness we can turn back, and look to God and live.

And I testify to you, brothers and sisters, that you can. You can turn. You can look away, and return your gaze to the light and love of Jesus Christ. You can pull your hand away from the snatches of sin, and put it into the Savior’s, whose hand is always stretched out, reaching towards you. And from there, He can pull you up, out of that pit of despair you may be in. We are commanded to “seek the face of the Lord always, that in patience ye may possess your souls, and ye shall have eternal life” (D&C 101:38). He is offering eternal life to us, to all the world, and to you personally, if only you search after Him. But sometimes sweeter than the far-off dream of eternal life is the simple peace He promises to those who seek his face. Brothers and sisters, the lesson of this is that if you want peace, pray.

Prayer, the most simple and basic of all communications, the medium by which repentance and humility trigger the Atonement, can bring about so much! The Savior’s voice in Third Nephi, right after detailing the consequences of wicked living, the destruction caused to all the cities who cast out and stone the prophets and were living in sin pled to the survivors, said to the people,

“O all ye that are spared because ye were more righteous than they, will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you? 14 --- Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have eternal life. Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, him will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me. (3 Nephi 9:13)

Brothers and sisters, Christ the Lord is truly risen, with healing in his wings. Healing is indeed the essence of the Atonement. Transformation. In one of the most quintessential verses representing the Atonement at work, 3 Nephi 17:7, Christ says so tenderly to the weeping Nephites, “Have ye any that are sick among you? Bring them hither. Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed, or leprous, or that are withered, or that are deaf, or that are afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither and I will heal them.” Think about that, brothers and sisters. His words: “Have ye any that are....afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither and I will heal them.” Afflicted in any manner. If there is anything about us that is broken, that needs help, that needs healing or perfecting, and if we bring ourselves to Him, He will heal us.

Indeed, Christ’s primary role in this mortal world was and is as a healer. Matthew reports that “as many as touched [by Christ] were made perfectly whole” (Matthew 14:35-36). His three-year ministry giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf was a type of his true, ultimate ministry: the work of the Atonement. And it is this healing, transformative power and work that I bear testimony of today, with my own story of darkness and light.

Brothers and sisters, there is only one future ahead of us: the future we choose, one choice at a time. There are other futures, of course, possible but non-existent; they do not exist literally and we will never know them. This is why our choices are so important. It’s the only chance we get to make them. And then it’s burned into our Book of Life.

        The Atonement, however, can change the ending of this book, and change it for the better, for God is a master novelist. He can weave, out of a story plagued by failures and doubts, losses and regrets, a happy ending. True are the words of the hymn, “Thy best, thy heavenly friend, through thorny paths, leads to a joyful end” (Be Still My Soul). Such He did with my story.

My dark times began with brief flirtations with pornography in my early teens. It was driven by one simple thing: curiosity. How much other sin occurs in our lives, and especially in the lives of our young people, from that feeling of curiosity alone! Within a few years, it had locked me in its clutches, and I became addicted. My agency had been taken away, or rather, it had been given away. Unbearable guilt soaked my mind constantly. Guilt coupled with fear. Of course no one could know what I was struggling with. Not peers, parents, or priesthood leaders. What shame would it be for others to know! It was something I had to deal with on my own. But of course I had no idea how to properly go about doing anything to help it. It attacked again and again and again, and though I knew it was wrong, and told myself I’d never do it again, that it was stupid, a stupid problem that I would never indulge in again, it continued, and the guilt and fear mounted. They were so great that I avoided my annual priesthood interview one year by taking sleeping pills so I’d be asleep at the time appointed for the interview. I was able to get out of that one, but the next year I was caught by surprise and ushered in from a social situation to the interview to become a priest. It was finally there, years into my sin, that I confessed to a bishop, simply because there was no way out of it but lying, and while I would avoid telling the truth sometimes, I would never tell someone a direct lie, and certainly not a bishop. That confession, however, didn’t fix anything. In fact, now that I had been specifically told not to take the sacrament, I started staying home from church to avoid the public shame. Despite my inactivity, however, I never stopped believing. I never turned fully away from God to embrace my sin and go off on my own track. I never accepted my behavior as harmless or normal. I knew exactly where my soul was: in darkness. I just didn’t know how to find the light. Scared of what it would take.

Around the time this problem came up in my life, clinical and chemical depression also emerged. My family has a long history of this emotional frailty, and it is no surprise it appeared at the time it did. I had also been gaining a lot of weight, and being a late bloomer did not help with my self-image. My spiritual suffering thus combined with my fragile emotional state to create a near impenetrable sense of self-hatred. I felt myself so worthy of disgust and loathing that I was even ashamed to merely be in the presence of a girl, let alone talk to one or look one in the face. I didn’t deserve it. I was beneath them. Beneath everyone, yes, but especially girls. Fat, unattractive, unworthy and in all ways repulsive, especially to myself.

I discovered that Hell for me is in comparisons. Comparing my own self and situation with those around me (or at least the surface of those around me) destroyed me. It still does from time to time. I would look at everyone else, how successful they were, how those guys had to shave, could talk with girls without looking away, could even garner their attention, and could take the sacrament, could administer the sacrament, and go on missions, and hate myself all the more. They were the right kind of priesthood holder. They were good in the sight of God. The way I never could be.

The most embarrassing and shameful moment of my life came in a Sunday School class when I was around sixteen. The teacher, for reasons I cannot remember or even fathom, addressed each of the males in the class in turn and asked what office of the priesthood we were. So there, before all of my peers, including girls, I had to let out my dark secret, that at sixteen I wasn’t a priest, but still a teacher in the Aaronic priesthood, because I wasn’t worthy to advance. I didn’t explicitly tell them that last part, of course, but it was the obvious implication. They all got to know, by inference, that I was addicted to pornography.

For my senior project in high school I wrote a novel. Its purpose was penance. A character in the story suffered from a similar problem of compulsion, and he overcomes it in the end. Overall it is a story of symbols, meant as a message, or rather a warning to society of the problems of sexual and pornographic indulgence, of living without rules or religion and doing whatever one wants to do. That was how much I knew what I was doing was wrong, and how much I wanted to repent. I just didn’t know how to. It is a curious aspect of chemical depression, that it has the power to make it impossible to feel the Spirit, to make one feel spiritually dead, cut off from the Lord. I felt that way for six years. Alone.

But in reality, we never truly are. Christ knew what I was going through. He knows what all of you are going through, what you’ve gone through. He knows the problems, the symptoms of the problems, and so is uniquely qualified to answer your, our, prayers. He too was alone, or rather, felt alone. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said the following in his beautiful April 2009 General Conference address: “...that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone” (“None Were With Him”).

That is what those of us struggling with the powers of darkness must realize. Even though at night you can’t see the sun, you can almost always see the moon, shining. The light of the moon is actually light from the unseen sun, proof of the sun’s continued existence---and in the allegory, God’s presence---even when we can’t see it, or Him, directly. But how difficult it is to internalize that fact! Partly because of the untreated depression, partly because of my spiritual state, I considered suicide, and often. But never entirely seriously. I wanted the pain to go away, the loneliness, the sin, the repeated attacks from the chemistry of my brain, but three things kept me from ever attempting it: one, I knew, knew that God was there, and I wasn’t supposed to do that; two, it would break my parents’ heart forever; and three, it would, of all things, leave my cat alone and friendless. My cat was like an angel to me, sent into my life at almost the exact same time my dark times began, and a near-constant presence through them. Indeed, later in my life, when I was ready to move out and begin a life away from home, she disappeared suddenly, and I never saw her again. I know that God took her home to Him because I no longer needed her and it was time for me to find a higher companion, my eternal companion. I have no doubt that that cat will be among the first to greet me when I pass into the next life.

Brothers and sisters, God has a plan for all of us. He had a plan for me. He is a master novelist who knows the end from the beginning. As Neal A. Maxwell reminds us, “having faith in God means having faith in God’s timing.” There was a timing to all this, a plan and miracle God had waiting. For six years I struggled and fought and failed and fell, again and again and again and again. A never-ending cycle. But there came a certain week in June where, it seemed, all at once, Christ, through the powers of the Atonement, shattered the shackles with which I was bound, and freed me.

For the last six or seven months preceding that week in June, things had been getting worse with my depression. My bipolar disorder fully emerged and I was living with a particular type called “mixed state” bipolar. People with typical bipolar disorder swing back and forth from extreme mania (high energy and optimism) to extreme depression. But mine did something else: both extremes would hit me at the same time. This meant that at night, my mind raced so fast that I couldn’t sleep (the manic side), and it raced with horrible, miserable, self-hating thoughts (the depressive side). It was hell. I found ways to cope with it, but it was getting worse. The depression fed the sin, and the sin, of course, fed the depression.

And so, as I said, God had a plan. I received first word of it in church one Sunday in late spring. A voice told me: get medication; when you get medication, everything else will fall into place.

I don’t know if the happy and hopeful feeling I felt in church that day was the Spirit or my mania or both, but I now, finally, had a ray of light to follow. Later that week I called my psychiatrist, who I had not seen in a very long time. (Years ago I had been on some medication but in my pride I rejected it because I didn’t want to be dependent on something artificial for my health.) Unfortunately, my psychiatrist didn’t answer the phone and I had to leave a message. One thing about him was that he didn’t call back too reliably, and so weeks went by without word from him, and I returned to my previous state of mind.

But then came the Wednesday of that miraculous week in June, and I got a call. My psychiatrist had an opening that day, within a few hours, and would I like to come in then? I certainly would. And so I did. And by the grace of Christ, the first medication we tried turned out to be exactly what I needed. So many poor souls dealing with mental disorders have to try several different medications until they find the right one, and that journey can be stressful and full of unexpected emotions and issues. But I found the right one on the first try. Miracle number one.

Then on Sunday a friend of mine, the only one whom I had talked about my problem with, issued a direct order: go talk to the bishop. The change that was being wrought in my soul at that time made this idea completely...possible. Utterly terrifying, yes, but also utterly necessary. Completely unlike the past six years had been. And so I made an appointment with him that very day, and confessed my sins to him a couple of days later. That caused miracle number two.

And somehow, my chains...were broken. I can’t tell you why that week, out of all the time that had passed, was the week, but that past Thursday, the day after getting on medication, was the last indulgence. The addiction was cut off (though, as with alcoholics, it will never leave me totally in this life). I gained control over my life, control over my soul. I was freed by my Savior. After three weeks of worthy living, I took the sacrament again, for the first time in five or so years. And because of that fact, I now truly understand the sacrament. It became the most important part of the week, the reason I went to church: to appreciate the sacrifice of Christ, to be grateful for it and to always remember Him.

I began other changes immediately. I started exercising, and I took pleasure in it, losing a total of about sixty pounds. I also switched from glasses to contact lenses. Cosmetic changes, to be sure, but reflective of the change inside me, and as a result I stopped hating myself. LDS speaker Brad Wilcox said in his talk “His Grace is Sufficient,” “The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can be cleansed and consoled but that we can be transformed.” This is what happened to me, inside and out. A friend who left on his mission while I was in my previous state came home and literally did not recognize me at first, my countenance had changed so much. My previous life, defined by self-hatred, stagnation, and failure, was transformed by the power of Christ, by the power of the Atonement. I shed the natural man and was reborn spiritually. Christ had healed me. Had transformed me.

Within a few months I was ordained an elder and received the Melchizedek Priesthood. [It is a bit of personal trivia that I was never ordained to be a priest; I ended up going directly from teacher to the Melchizedek Priesthood.] I wanted to try to repay the Savior for what He did for me, and soon I knew it was finally time to go about preparing to serve a mission. I was writing in my journal one day and I wrote, “I want to serve...” and then pondered what words should follow after: “a mission” or “God.” Both would work, but I ended up writing “I want to serve God and go on a mission.” This may be inconsequential to most people, but to me it was very important, for when I looked up D&C Section 4, the quintessential missionary scripture, it repeated back to my the phrasing I knew was influenced by the Holy Ghost: “Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work” (D&C 4:3, italics added). Reading that verse and taking note of that exact word choice was confirmation to me that I should start working on my papers. And so I did.

They were officially submitted by that next May, and I looked forward to finding out where I would go. But the weeks passed, and the call didn’t come. After much time, my stake president inquired as to what was going on, and discovered what has become one of the biggest ironies of my life: the medication that I take for bipolar disorder, the medication that saved my life and helped put my soul in such a state that I could be worthy to serve a mission, caused a red flag to go up in Salt Lake; those who take that particular medication are generally not allowed to go on missions because of what conditions they take it for. And so, after months of patience and quiet work and prayer, I was asked by my stake president how I felt about not going on a mission and moving on with my life.

Someone else may have taken this news as a wonderful excuse not to have to serve the Lord. But I took it and continue to take it in the exact opposite way: instead of merely serving the Lord for two years, I must serve Him with and throughout my entire life. He healed me, and freed me, and so I must help Him heal others, free others, by bringing them to Christ and helping them access the power of the Atonement.

Brother Wilcox quotes his friend Brett Sanders, saying: “A life impacted by grace eventually begins to look like Christ’s life.” Brothers and sisters, this is our goal! Joseph Smith once said, “Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive. God does not look on sin with [the least degree of] allowance, but … the nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls; we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs.”

Thus, as the Atonement takes its effect, and we are gradually brought to be one with Christ, we become like Him, and see God’s children from his point of view, and seek to retrieve those eternally important souls back from the abyss and place them in the arms of Jesus, where they can be healed and transformed.

Brother Wilcox provides an allegory for the Atonement, undoubtedly familiar to some: “Christ’s arrangement with us is similar to a mom providing music lessons for her child. Mom pays the piano teacher... Because Mom pays the debt in full, she can turn to her child and ask for something... Practice! Does the child’s practice pay the piano teacher? No. Does the child’s practice repay Mom for paying the piano teacher? No. Practicing is how the child shows appreciation for Mom’s incredible gift. It is how he takes advantage of the amazing opportunity Mom is giving him to live his life at a higher level. Mom’s joy is found not in getting repaid but in seeing her gift used—seeing her child improve. And so she continues to call for practice, practice, practice.”

A mentor of mine, Stephan Peers, elaborated on this point. He told me once that “One of the great aspects of the Atonement is not so much that Jesus takes on our sins. It is why he does and what he asks us to learn from it. Basically, we try to do what he does: lift burdens. As he did, you see the burdens of others which much more clarity when you have experienced you own...When we are in the depths [of pain and despair], and we look up and the Lord says, This is how it works. Whom do you want to be? THAT is when we get bold and strong and learn to lift others, and have discernment, and learn to carry burdens, magnificently most of which are not ours.”

So because I was forgiven and given mercy, I too want to show others that same mercy. I understand how hard and awful and miserable it can be to be locked in a perpetual grapple with sin, and how a person struggling with addiction can really and truly be good at heart. These struggling souls are not bad people in their hearts; they are simply in the devil’s hands and so  must do what he wants them to do. Their agency has, almost entirely, been taken away. And so I ask you, brothers and sisters, not to look down on those fighting against this enemy. I needed, and they need now, love and understanding. They need to know they’re not alone. They need to know, you need to know, that change is possible.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said the following in his beautiful April 2009 General Conference address: “Brothers and sisters, one of the great consolations of this Easter season is that because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so. His solitary journey brought great company for our little version of that path—the merciful care of our Father in Heaven, the unfailing companionship of this Beloved Son, the consummate gift of the Holy Ghost, angels in heaven, family members on both sides of the veil, prophets and apostles, teachers, leaders, friends. All of these and more have been given as companions for our mortal journey because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His gospel. Trumpeted from the summit of Calvary is the truth that we will never be left alone nor unaided, even if sometimes we may feel that we are. Truly the Redeemer of us all said: ‘I will not leave you comfortless: [My Father and] I will come to you [and abide with you].’ “

Brother Wilcox said, “The older I get, and the more I understand this wonderful plan of redemption, the more I realize that in the final judgment it will not be the unrepentant sinner begging Jesus, “Let me stay.” No, he will probably be saying, “Get me out of here!” Knowing Christ’s character, I believe that if anyone is going to be begging on that occasion, it would probably be Jesus begging the unrepentant sinner, “Please, choose to stay. Please, use my Atonement—not just to be cleansed but to be changed so that you want to stay... The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can go home but that—miraculously—we can feel at home there.”

Thus the purpose of the Atonement is to change. As President Thomas S. Monson said so powerfully in October 2012’s General Priesthood Session, “Men---can---change.” The Atonement’s healing powers can purge those parts of us that are worldly and mortal, that are of the natural man, and replace them with divinity, with godliness. Though we all have been sinners, though many of us may now be puppets in the devil’s hands, we can become like Jesus, a being like Him, perfect in all things, and most importantly in Christlike love.

Brothers and sister, we owe Him so much. We owe Him not just two years, but our entire lives. Let us show Him our gratitude for His infinite sacrifice, His infinite blessings. Though we can never hope to repay Him completely, we can show our appreciation by doing what He did, becoming like Him, and helping others access the freely offered gift of salvation, of healing, of heavenly transformation. There, in Christ, is hope. For all of us.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.