Focus

Been having a little trouble getting all "Christmased up" this year. Needed this reminder today. Thought I'd share.

To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world.

". . .I speak of those final moments. . .that concluding descent into the paralyzing despair of divine withdrawal when He cries out in ultimate loneliness, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?'

". . .But Jesus held on. He pressed on. The goodness in Him allowed faith to triumph even in a state of complete anguish. The trust He lived by told Him in spite of His feelings that divine compassion is never absent, that God is always faithful, that he never flees nor fails us. When the uttermost farthing had then been paid, when Christ's determination to be faithful was as obvious as it was utterly invincible, finally and mercifully, it was 'finished'. Against all odds and with none to help or uphold Him, Jesus of Nazareth, the living Son of the living God, restored physical life where death has held sway and brought joyful, spiritual redemption out of sin, hellish darkness and despair. With faith in a God He knew was there, He could say in triumph, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.'"

~Elder Jeffery R. Holland

"There would be no Christmas if there had been no Easter. The babe Jesus of Bethlehem would be but another baby without the redeeming Christ of Gethsemane and Calvary and the triumphant fact of the Resurrection."

~President Gordon B. Hinkley

". . .May we stand by Jesus Christ 'at all times and in all things and in all places that [we] may be in, even unto death', for surely that is how He stood by us when it was unto death and when He had to stand entirely and utterly alone."

~Jeffrey R. Holland