Atonement 101

I've been thinking a lot about the Savior's Atonement this past week - and if anything, I've realized how much there is to it that I don't understand. I really want to understand it (and I desperately wanted to understand it this week because I had to teach it in Gospel Doctrine!), but it seems so deep and mysterious to me.

As I was listening to a friend bare her testimony today, I recognized a tiny, almost unnoticeable, light appear in my mind that made the reality and importance of the Atonement a tiny bit more visible to me. And I started to think.

I think the awesomeness, and mysteriousness of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is much like the awesomeness and mysteriousness that I feel about the human body (I know - it sounds like a stretch, but just bare with me!). When I was a child I knew that if I wanted to run, my legs would move; if I wanted to touch something, my arm would reach out; if I wanted to look at something, my eyeballs would shift; if I got a cut, it would disappear in a few days. I knew it would happen because that's just the way things were. It wasn't until high school, when I took my first physiology class, that I was slowly introduced to a whole new world of how our bodies work. All the sudden something so normal became awesome and fascinating to me. I found it so awesome and fascinating that I went on to get a bachelors degree in Biology...and I still have so much to learn.

Similarly, when I was a child I knew that Christ went through the Atonement for me. I knew I would be resurrected and that I could live with God again. I didn't really think about it much...I knew it would happen because that's just the way things were. But after studying the Atonement this past week, I kind of feel like I've taken my first course in Atonement, and that I've been slowly introduced into a whole new world of what that really means, and why it is so important. It is becoming awesome, fascinating and mysterious to me.

Anyway - just a random thought.