Suffering

E. Stanley Jones once asked Mahatma Gandhi as he sat on a cot in an open courtyard of Yeravda jail, "Isn't your fasting a species of coercion?"
"Yes," he said very slowly, "the same kind of coercion which Jesus exercises upon you from the cross." (The Infinite Atonement, pg 213)

Easter is not a comfortable holiday. We do not have tender depictions of a mother holding her new baby and humble shepherds coming to worship Him. Instead we have videos about thorns and nails and weeping women at the cross. Although it wasn't too graphic, we still called The Lamb of God the "scary Jesus video" at our house when we were little. It was hard to watch! It's hard to see someone hurting. We instinctively want to turn away.

And yet, sometimes we cannot turn away. Sometimes it is our own child suffering, and we need to look at the wound in order to help. We are not drawn to them out of morbid curiosity. We are drawn to their suffering because we love them.

With the Savior, it is slightly different. We love Him because we are drawn to His suffering. As an old poem says,

Tis Thou Thyself dost move me,—Thy blood poured

    Upon the cross from nailed foot and hand;

    And all the wounds that did Thy body brand;

And all Thy shame and bitter death's award. (To Christ Crucified)

We are moved by this depiction not merely because He suffered. We are moved because He did it for us. After all, suffering in and of itself is not meaningful. Sometimes it is just dumb. But when we know someone is suffering on our behalf, it changes us. It softens us. It makes us live differently.

It can be relatively small, like realizing someone inconvenienced themselves to do a favor for us. It can happen when someone fasts for us, even if they are fasting indirectly as part of a worldwide fast. But we are always changed, whether we know it or not, when someone does something out of pure love for us.

This is why Jacob taught his people to "believe in Christ, and view his death, and suffer his cross and bear the shame of the world;" (Jacob 1:8). This is why Jesus admonished us to always remember Him (3 Nephi 18:7). It is not so that we feel shame at His pain.

It is so that we can feel joy that He triumphed over all suffering.