Thursday, October 25, 2012

Reclaimed through Christ


     The atonement is AMAZING! Isn't it wonderful how through Jesus Christ and his atonement we can be saved from the low lands of sorrow and pain and brought to the wonderful high lands of joy and peace. In the October 2012 General Conference, President Thomas S Monson shared two experiences that exemplified the effects of the atonement in peoples lives.

"When I first became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I had the opportunity to accompany President N. Eldon Tanner, a counselor to President David O. McKay, to a stake conference in Alberta, Canada. During the meeting, the stake president read the names of four brethren who had qualified to be ordained elders. These were men whom President Tanner knew, for at one time he had lived in that area. But President Tanner knew and remembered them as they once were and did not know that they had turned their lives around and had fully qualified to become elders.
"The stake president read the name of the first man and asked him to stand. President Tanner whispered to me, “Look at him. I never thought he would make it.” The stake president read the name of the second man, and he stood. President Tanner nudged me again and reported his astonishment. And so it was with all four of the brethren.
"After the meeting, President Tanner and I had the opportunity to congratulate these four brethren. They had demonstrated that men can change." 
He goes on, "During the 1940s and 1950s, an American prison warden, Clinton Duffy, was well known for his efforts to rehabilitate the men in his prison. Said one critic, “You should know that leopards don’t change their spots!”
"Replied Warden Duffy, 'You should know I don’t work with leopards. I work with men, and men change every day.'"
     Change is a wonderful thing! Anyone can change. Change is repentance in action and the power behind that change is the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Through His suffering we can be healed, we can be reclaimed. Then after we have been rescued from the the filth don't go back. Don't go back in your life and defiantly not in the life of others just to dig up old garbage.
"Why anyone would destroy something so beautiful and useful in an attempt to dig up old garbage"