Father, We Thank Thee

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girl sitting among wildflowers

Camie in Wildflowers, by Rose Datoc Dall, may not be copied

Before all else, we should thank our Heavenly Father for our very lives and that we have the amazing experiences of mortality: the privilege of growing our faith, learning to love within a family, and experiencing the joys of friendship that surround us.

I love these words from a Primary song:

I have found that if we are attentive, every one of us who has ever lived has felt our Heavenly Father’s love. Some of us perhaps feel it more often than others, but we have all felt it. We need to remember that, reflect upon it, and seek it. The fact that this gift comes to all does not diminish its magnificence—quite the contrary. King Benjamin taught:

“If you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you …

“… And is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants” (Mosiah 2:20–21).

When I was young, I realized that these magnificent gifts had been given to me, not for anything I had done but simply as gifts from God. I could move my fingers. I could walk. I could think. I could love. God had given me life. Independent of our challenges, difficulties, stresses, temptations, and pains, the very fact that you and I have life is a gift beyond price.

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ittle girls taking fruit from a tree

That They May Partake, by Rose Datoc Dall, may not be copied

Another one of our greatest blessings is our ability to choose, to decide, to shape our desires, and to determine those things we will love and those things we will discard. Our ability to choose started long before we came to this earth. In the premortal world, the Father’s plan was presented. One who was known as Lucifer came forward saying, “Here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor” (Moses 4:1).

Lucifer did not desire to give us a mortal experience where we could learn and grow, choose right over wrong, and develop faith in God. His chief aim was his own honor and glory. How thankful we are for Him whom the Father called “my Beloved Son,” and who said, “Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever” (Moses 4:2) and, “Here am I, send me” (Abraham 3:27).

We are agents unto ourselves (see Doctrine and Covenants 58:28), with the freedom to think and grow and choose—even realizing that at times we will make mistakes.

I had an experience that influenced my feelings about the importance of choosing what is right. Several years ago, the young daughter of a friend of mine died in a tragic accident. Hopes and dreams were shattered. My friend felt unbearable sorrow. He began to question what he believed.

The mother of my friend asked if I would talk to him and give him a blessing. As I laid my hands upon his head, I felt to tell him something I had not thought about in the same way before. The impression that came to me was this: “Faith is not only a feeling; it is also a decision.” He would need to choose faith.

My friend chose the road of faith and obedience. He got on his knees. His spiritual balance returned. The ability to seek within ourselves the gift of faith is an enormous spiritual blessing.

The Savior taught us how to choose the right even when it is not easy. Just prior to Gethsemane, He said, “Father, save me from this hour,” and then, perhaps pausing, He added, “but for this cause came I unto this hour” (John 12:27).

The prophet Abinadi said, “The will of the Son [will be] swallowed up in the will of [His] Father” (Mosiah 15:7).

You don’t know exactly what is ahead of you in life. There will be joys and happiness, but there will also be trials and disappointments. Jesus declared that we are to “settle this in [our] hearts”—that we will do as our Father has taught us (Joseph Smith Translation, Luke 14:28).

President Brigham Young (1801–77) said, “Submit to the hand of the Lord, … and acknowledge his hand in all things … , then you will be exactly right, and until you come to that point you cannot be entirely right. That is what we have to come to.”²

President Joseph F. Smith (1838–1918) added that we must “[educate] our desires.”³ That’s a very powerful term to think about.

When we determine to choose the right, to keep the commandments, to be unafraid of letting our will be swallowed up in the will of our Heavenly Father, we are giving to Him one of the few things that is truly ours to give.

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Apostles sleep while the Savior walks away alone

None Were with Him, by Rose Datoc Dall, may not be copied

Finally, let us ever be thankful for Jesus Christ, the Son of God.⁴ For me, there are no words in any language to truly describe the majesty, the power, the glory, or the love of the Son of God. As we consider our utter dependence upon Jesus Christ for our eternal redemption, our gratefulness and love for God blossoms.

With compassion and mercy, He taught the truth, healed the sick, and invited us all to repent and come unto Him. Then He prepared for His ultimate act of love.

In His final week, after three years of ministering, Jesus came into Jerusalem. On Thursday evening, He was with the Twelve Apostles in the upper room (see Mark 14:17–25). He instituted the sacrament in remembrance of the sacrifice He was preparing to offer (see Matthew 26:26–28). He washed the Apostles’ feet and explained, “I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done” (John 13:15). He bid them to “love one another” (John 13:34).

Then He prayed, sang a hymn, and led them outside the city walls to Gethsemane (see Matthew 26:30, 36). Arriving at Gethsemane, at the base of the Mount of Olives, He left eight of His disciples and took Peter, James, and John with Him (see Matthew 26:36–38). Matthew, who was there that night, recorded this sacred event:

“And he … began to be sorrowful and very heavy.

“Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.

“And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed” (Matthew 26:37–39).

Luke, who was not present but later interviewed eyewitnesses, added, “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and he sweat as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Joseph Smith Translation, Luke 22:44).

In the olive orchard, on the Mount of Olives, and near the olive press (Gethsemane), all the sins, sadness, sorrows, sickness, and suffering of all who had lived or would live upon the earth came upon Him, and He bled from “every pore” (Mosiah 3:7; see also Doctrine and Covenants 19:18).

Alma said He bore our sicknesses “that he may know according to the flesh how to succor [us in the midst of our] infirmities” (Alma 7:12).

The Savior Himself said that “he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:6).

In the terrible suffering in Gethsemane, Mark said that Jesus was “sore amazed” (Mark 14:33; see also Joseph Smith Translation, Mark 14:36–38). “Sore amazed” in Greek means astonished, awestruck. Jesus had known since our premortal life that He would take upon Himself the sins of all, but He had never experienced the Atonement. The agony was immeasurable.⁵

In our day, He described His experience as having trodden “the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:107), “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 19:18).

The all-encompassing agony that caused Him to sweat great drops of blood would have left His body weakened beyond mortal comprehension, but His agony continued. The betrayal by one who walked with Him, His face slapped and spat upon as He stood before the Jewish rulers, His body scourged, and a crown of thorns pressed into His head by His Roman captors all came in the ensuing hours (see Mark 14:65; 15:16–20; John 18:12). Finally, a heavy beam was thrust upon the torn flesh of His back as He moved toward Golgotha (see John 19:16–17).

Pontius Pilate, after declaring that he had found “no fault in [Jesus]” (John 19:4), cowardly capitulated to the cries of the mob, “Crucify Him, Crucify Him” (see Matthew 27:22). At 9:00 a.m., at Golgotha, meaning the “place of burial” (see Joseph Smith Translation, Matthew 27:35), Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. On the cross, the agonies of Gethsemane “recurred, intensified beyond human power to endure.”⁶

After six hours on the cross, Jesus cried out, “It is finished, thy will is done” (Joseph Smith Translation, Matthew 27:54; see also John 19:30). The Savior turned the final page of His mortality. His sacrifice for us was accomplished.

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Mary weeping at the tomb of Jesus

Why Weepest Thou? by Rose Datoc Dall, may not be copied

Jesus Christ was the first in all human history to rise from the grave. On the first day of the week, the women came to the tomb bringing spices they had prepared for His burial. The stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty. They found two men clothed in shining garments. As the women “bowed down their faces to the earth,” the angels asked, “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.” (See Luke 24:1–6.)

Soon after that, He appeared to His Apostles with a personal witness of His own Resurrection: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39).

Later, “he was seen [by more than] five hundred brethren at once” (1 Corinthians 15:6). Following His Resurrection, He appeared and ministered to 2,500 men, women, and children in the Americas (see 3 Nephi 11–28). Because He lives and rose from the tomb, all mankind will be resurrected.

Let us be forever filled with awe, gratitude, and wonder of the Savior’s sacred Atonement.

How thankful I am for my life, my breath. How thankful I am for my moral agency, my ability to choose right over wrong, to choose to keep the commandments. How grateful I am for our Savior, Jesus Christ, who, through His Resurrection, has rescued us from death. And how thankful I am that He, through His pure life and willingness to take upon Himself our sins as we repent, has rescued us from the chains of the adversary and given us a way back into the Father’s presence.