The Perfect Sufferer

Jesus Christ is our perfect example of how to suffer. He, who descended below all things, overcoming the world, showed us in His most intense moments of suffering, even the Atonement, how we should suffer our gethsemenes and how we should carry our crosses.

Of course, none of our suffering can be comparable to His in any measure, but in our lives we will have times where our souls may feel "exceedingly sorrowful even unto death" and our hearts may feel "very heavy."

But it is in these moments, perhaps, that we are most able to appreciate our Savior's atonement. It is in these moments we can turn to Him, and He can heal us--precisely because He walked the exact same path before, and knows "according to the flesh" what it feels like to have a hard day, a hard week, or even many hard weeks. He can stand by us because He went there before. Even when he was faced with pain so "exquisite" and so "hard to bear", "which suffering caused I, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore and to suffer both body and spirit"--even then, he did not turn away, but "as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth." This He did because He so loved us.

He showed us the example.

When life gets hard, and we wish our God would make things easier, simpler, or less painful--instead of murmuring or complaining, or lashing out against God or our neighbor; we, like the Savior, can pray, "nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt."