Her Story Can Be Our Story

It's Christmastime, one of the best times of the year! I love the worldwide focus on Christ and his love. I have been thinking this week about the real reason we celebrate Christmas. Christ's birth is so important because of what he came to do for us—he broke the bands of sin and death!

He died for us, and he returned as our resurrected Savior.

After his resurrection he visited many of his disciples, and my favorite story is that of Mary Magdalene. Christ's visit to her is one of the most personal. It can be found in John 20:

15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

Mary was the first person to see our resurrected Lord! Is this not significant?

There are some that use this fact as a basis for the theory that Mary was the wife of Christ. Why else would she have been first, right?

While this theory might be true, I like the way that a guest speaker in my religion class put it. She thinks of it in a much more personal and applicable way.

What was it that really made Mary special enough that Christ appeared to her first? It was the fact that she lingered. She stayed by the tomb, mourning for her Messiah with a love that kept her eyes wet with tears. Perhaps Mary's story could have been anyone's story, if only they had lingered.

I like to think that Christ would have appeared to any disciple who did the same in that moment. That's who Christ is, after all; he is the Savior of all mankind. He loved not just the crowd, but the individual. And what made Mary special to him is that she was his disciple and his friend.

If it had been me or you that day by the tomb, would not Christ have had equal love enough to show himself to us? Yes, I think he would.

For truly, he shows himself to each and every one of us that turns our heart to him in love. It's when we linger on his words and truly sorrow for our sins that we too can see the light of our resurrected Lord.

The Sinner, the Accuser, and the Savior

Image from LDS Media

How often do we find ourselves looking down on someone for their sins? How many times have we ourselves been looked down upon? We've each been, at one time or another, either the sinner or the accuser in our own lives.

Studying the story of the adulteress woman in John 8 (watch the Bible Videos version for a powerful take on it), I noticed that this story exemplifies Christ's role as mediator between those who are accused and those who do the accusing.

In this story, the Pharisees rudely push a woman in front of Christ and present the question, "This woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?" (John 8:4–5).

If we had been there that day, where would we most likely be looking? A crowd has just come barging in, dragging a woman and accusing her of one of the three greatest sins (Alma 39:3–5). Not only is the accusation condemning, but the Pharisees had caught her "in the very act." She probably is not looking like someone who expected to be out in public. And by the time they got her to the temple, she would have been a mess. So again, where are everyone's eyes likely to be?

Directly on her.

What shame she must have felt. She must have sensed everyone's eyes boring into her as she hid her face from their stares.

But the very first thing that Christ does to answer the Pharisee's question shows his deep understanding and love for her: "Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground" (John 8:6). Again imagining that we are there, what is Christ doing to our attention in that moment? We are staring at the woman, when suddenly, our gaze is caught by his movement. All eyes would have been drawn to his finger, all thoughts focused on his writing.

No longer would the crowd be concentrated on the woman and her sin, staring at her with condemning or sorrowful eyes. He pulls everyone's attention away from the sinner and onto Him.

This is symbolic of what Christ does for all of us. We are all sinners to one degree or another, and we all have the opportunity to "go, and sin no more" (John 8:11). Through the Atonement, Christ has taken upon himself our sin. And because of the Atonement, we will no longer have to feel the shame that comes from our past mistakes.

But in this story, Christ doesn't just stop there. Not only did he stoop down and draw all attention onto him, but when he stood back up, he continued to teach. The first words out of his mouth were, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (John 8:7). This is the second lesson of the Atonement that we can find in this story. For Christ's role is to not only to take upon himself our sins, but also to encourage us to repent. With this invitation, Christ turns the attention of everyone in the crowd back onto themselves. 

All eyes started on the sinner but were drawn to the Savior and then were commanded to turn to themselves and their own lives. For that's what the Atonement is about. We can't experience the full saving power unless we stop judging others and change ourselves.

We've all made mistakes. We've all sinned. Maybe today, it's the adulteress woman in the middle, but what if it were you? For it could be you, couldn't it? Isn't that what Christ is saying here? That we all stand no higher than this woman? So why do we judge her?

Truly, none of us would be able to cast that first stone. 

Mother, Thy Faith Will Make Thee Whole

Photo by Dawid Sobolewski on Unsplash

Being a mother—this has always terrified me. The discomfort and pain, the lack of sleep, the complete surrender of personal desires... That doesn't sound very appealing. Not to mention, I feel incredibly under-qualified. If motherhood was a job and I had to turn in a resume, there would be no reason for Heavenly Father to hire me.

And yet, he will anyway. Me, an under-qualified candidate who has always dreaded the idea of having children.

Someday, I'll be a mother. Weird.

But this post isn't for me. I write this for all of those young mothers that I know. The mothers that I see trying so hard to raise their children and still stay on their feet. They all look so strong! These new mothers take the pain and the fatigue with such grace. Yet, I know it can't be easy.

If they are anything like I would be, they don't feel qualified for the work they are doing. It must be overwhelming and just plain exhausting.

If I were to send these amazing mothers anywhere, it would be to Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk, "Because She Is a Mother." When I become a mother myself, I think I might listen to this every day. It's that powerful and reassuring.

The part that stood out to me this time around was the very end, when Elder Holland compares mothers to the woman in Matthew 9:20-22 who had the faith to be healed, but did not feel worthy enough to approach the Savior directly. I had never thought about it before, but this woman is so similar to the mothers I know: She did everything in her power to find the cure to her disease, hiring doctor after doctor, taking medicine after medicine. I'm sure that she prayed to Heavenly Father for help during those 12 years of sickness. Any mother will do the same, doing everything in her power to raise her children the best she can.

And just like with the woman in the Bible, the answer comes in Christ. He is the healer, both physically and spiritually. If you think about it, mothers really do experience miracles every day—how else would they be able to keep going with little sleep and no time for themselves? That, to me, sounds like a miracle in which the body is literally being healed. So too can mothers, like the woman in the Bible, be spiritually healed as well.

So to all the mothers out there who are feeling a little overworked, "You are doing God's work. You are doing it wonderfully well. He is blessing you and He will bless you even—no, especially—when your days and your nights may be the most challenging. Like the woman who anonymously, meekly, perhaps even with hesitation and some embarrassment, fought her way through the crowd just to touch the hem of the Master's garment, so Christ will say to the women who worry and wonder and sometimes weep over their responsibility as mothers, 'Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole'" (Holland).

The Virgin Mary: Despised and Rejected of Men

Image from Nativity--Bible Images on lds.org

Have you ever thought of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a Christ-figure? I hadn't, until this past week in my religion class.

Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, was prophetically described in Isaiah chapter 53 as a man to be "despised and rejected of men" (verse 3). His life mission was never to gain favor in the sight of man, but instead to fulfill God's purpose. He was and is still rejected by many. I've come to accept this verse as not only a lament for the Savior's sufferings, but also as praise for a Savior who never failed to follow the Father's will.

Only recently did I start to connect this verse to Jesus's mother as well. Mary too was a woman who received ill-favor from those around her for the work that she was called to do. She, a pure and righteous virgin, was asked to give birth to the Son of God in a manner that looked illegitimate to everyone who knew her. And still, knowing the hardships that would come, she replied, "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38). This closely resembles the attitude of Christ's reply to the Lord's call when he agreed to the role God had planned for him: "Here am I, send me" (Abraham 3: 27).

What Mary had ahead of her was likely a life full of hatred, her peers no longer having respect for her nor her family. Perhaps her family disowned her. We really don't know. I like to think that they accepted her and believed her story, but with the amount of negative feelings that existed toward adultery then, it's possible they didn't. No wonder Mary went to Elizabeth's home "with haste," as it describes in Luke 1:39. She certainly would have been the object of spite in her own hometown, looked down on as an adulteress—even worthy of death

Looking at her story, can you see resemblances of Christ's? I can only wonder, if Jesus Christ is our Savior, what role did Mary play in helping him become so? We will never really know how she taught him or what she said, but as a mother, she would have been able to empathizes with her son during all of his suffering. From her own experience, Mary must have known a portion of what Christ was going through, both in preparation for and then during his ministry.

In some ways, I can now understand why the Catholic church puts so much emphasis on the Virgin Mary. Truly, she was a miraculous woman, and though never crucified herself, her experiences and trials resembled those of Christ.

And above all, even through the loss of honor in her family's eyes and the pain from judgmental looks, she knew she was a woman highly favored of the Lord:

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. (Luke 1:28)

I can just imagine how Mary must have looked into the eyes of the little baby in her arms, knowing that he was the cause for so much of her pain—and yet her eyes must have been so full of love and gratitude.

In the same way, I imagine Christ looking at me, his arms outstretched to me—even after I have added to his pain. Just as Mary never lost her love for Christ, Christ will always be reaching to me with a full and happy heart, waiting for me to take his hand.