The Matchless Gift of His Divine Son

Twelve years ago President Monson gave a talk in general conference about gratitude. He recounted the story of the family of Gordon Green who grew up in Canada about a century ago on a farm. In a particular year their family were joyed to finally be able to get electricity to their farm. The oil lamps were replaced with much brighter electric lightbulbs and the wash no longer had to be done by hand. Unfortunately, later that year they had a very bad crop because of excessive rains, and they had very little to celebrate on Thanksgiving. President Monson recounted, “On Thanksgiving morning, however, Gordon’s father showed up with a jackrabbit and asked his wife to cook it. Grudgingly she started the job, indicating it would take a long time to cook that tough old thing. When it was finally on the table with some of the turnips that had survived, the children refused to eat. Gordon’s mother cried, and then his father did a strange thing. He went up to the attic, got an oil lamp, took it back to the table, and lighted it. He told the children to turn out the electric lights. When there was only the lamp again, they could hardly believe that it had been that dark before. They wondered how they had ever seen anything without the bright lights made possible by electricity.” Gordon related, “In the humble dimness of the old lamp we were beginning to see clearly again.” Sometimes we aren’t grateful until a particular blessing is taken away, at which point we realize just how blessed we were to have it. As President Monson quoted Aldous Huxley, “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” At this time of Thanksgiving, we should strive to see even though things that haven’t been taken away and not take for granted the bounteous blessings of life, love, family, and so much more that the Lord has showered upon us.

               Of all the things that we might take for granted, perhaps the most important is the Savior Himself. It is all too easy to not remember Him and not see the great blessings that He has given to us, which is why each week we are reminded with the Sacrament to remember Him. Jacob in the Book of Mormon expressed what it would be like if the Savior was taken away from us, if His great atoning sacrifice had not been made in our behalf. He wrote, “It behooveth the great Creator that he suffereth himself to become subject unto man in the flesh, and die for all men…. because man became fallen they were cut off from the presence of the Lord. Wherefore, it must needs be an infinite atonement—save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration. And if so, this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more. O the wisdom of God, his mercy and grace! For behold, if the flesh should rise no more our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God, and became the devil, to rise no more.” Without the infinite atonement of the Savior there would be no resurrection and no mercy to provide us the ability to repent of our sins. Without Him, we would “become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself” (2 Nephi 9:6-9). Nephi also thought through the implications of our existence without the Savior, saying this: “For if there be no Christ there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. But there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time” (2 Nephi 11:7). Without Christ there would have been no Creation and we would not have life as we know it. And so, this Thanksgiving, we should give thanks that there is a Christ who created the world and us, who “looked upon the wide expanse of eternity, and all the seraphic hosts of heaven, before the world was made… the same which spake, and the world was made” (Doctrine and Covenants 38:1, 3). We can give thanks for Him who told us, “I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;… Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit” (Doctrine and Covenants 19:16, 18). Because of Him we can overcome all challenges in this life, all pain and sickness and sorrow and sin, and we too will on day rise from the grave because of His grace and mercy. Let us not ever take His perfect life and mission for granted, and as modern-day apostles have expressed, “God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son.”