Week 7: Gethsemane

I found this song from a group on Yahoo that is for Primary Music Choristers.
We share ideas and helps for our calling. This is a song that some have had permission to use for their Primary Program. It is so wonderful I am on a quest to get it approved for my primary too.

---"Part of the reason the Savior suffered in Gethsemane was so that he would have an infinite compassion for us as we experience our trials and tribulations. Through his suffering in Gethsemane, the Savior became qualified to be the perfect judge. Not one of us will be able to approach him on the Judgment Day and say, “You don’t know what it was like.” He knows the nature of our trials better than we do, for he “descended below them all.”

As a loving Father in Heaven viewed his Beloved Son suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Savior cried out, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matt. 26:39.)

Can you imagine the tears in the eyes of the Father when he had to deny his Son’s request? Can we comprehend the sacred tears shed by the Father when he had to abandon the Savior on the cross and hear him say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34.) And yet, even as God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ wept, the sinners laughed.

Each of us must pass through our own Gethsemanes.

As you shed tears in your Gethsemanes while others laugh with the sinners, don’t curse the purifying fire in which you have been placed. Your crucible is divine and will ultimately perfect you. Latter-day Saints don’t seek the unpleasant things of life. We don’t look for pain and suffering. However, we recognize that trials and tribulations come to all of us and they can be turned into spiritual stepping-stones to sanctification and exaltation."  

Glenn L. Pace, "Crying with the Saints", Ensign, Sept. 1988, 70

---“On the night Jesus was betrayed, He took three of the Twelve and went into the place called Gethsemane. There He suffered the pains of all men. He suffered as only God could suffer, bearing our griefs, carrying our sorrows, being wounded for our transgressions, voluntarily submitting Himself to the iniquity of us all, just as Isaiah prophesied (see Isa. 53:4–6).

“It was in Gethsemane that Jesus took on Himself the sins of the world, in Gethsemane that His pain was equivalent to the cumulative burden of all men, in Gethsemane that He descended below all things so that all could repent and come to Him. The mortal mind fails to fathom, the tongue cannot express, the pen of man cannot describe the breadth, the depth, the height of the suffering of our Lord—nor His infinite love for us” (The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson [1988], 14).

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I am so grateful to the Savior for his incredible suffering.
I have suffered tears and heartache of my own. As much pain as I felt, I cannot imagine in the slightest, the suffering that my Brother Jesus Christ felt in Gethsemane.
As a parent I have seen my children go through pain and wanted nothing more then take it away.
Our Heavenly Father had to watch and allow His own son suffer, what heartache He must have felt.
Yet, the plan was fulfilled for me, for all of us.
I love my Savior, and pray that I may learn to apply this incredible love to my life and my pain and my sins.