With Wondering Awe

Today in Relief Society we had a lesson about the life and Atonement of Jesus Christ which seemed wonderfully appropriate for the day after Christmas. During the lesson I thought about an experience I had as a missionary that I haven't thought about for a long time:


It was a week or so before Christmas and we got a call from a member asking us to go and visit a family he knew. We stopped by and the parents ushered us back to their daughter's bedroom. There lay a lovely young woman about my own age. Her body was weak and emaciated from the ravishes of cancer and she didn't have the strength to sit up and great us and she could barely manage to speak louder than a whisper.  I sat down on the side of her bed and explained who we were and why we had come to see her. We talked for a few minutes then she looked up at me with her big, beautiful, brown eyes and asked me what was going to happen when she died. I felt the peace of the Spirit come over me as I quietly told her about the Plan of Salvation, the hope of the Atonement, and the promise of resurrection.

I was transferred from that area the day after Christmas and I never saw her again. But I will never forget that moment in that quiet, dimly-lit room when we all felt the burden of death, pain, discouragement, and tragedy lifted though the power of the life and Atonement of Jesus Christ.

That to me is the true meaning of Christmas.

My boyfriend said that celebrate didn't seem like quite the right word to describe how we remember the coming of Him who took the pains and sins of the world so that we would not have to suffer the demands of Justice; of Him who made it possible that we could be resurrected and live for eternity with our families in the presence of God. The appropriate response, he said, would be speechless wonder and silent awe. I've had a quiet afternoon at home and spent hours studying and pondering the Atonement. I think speechless wonder and silent awe pretty well sum up the way I feel now.