As the chapel began to fill I sat and listened to the prelude music. As the meeting began there was a little family of three who made their way to sit two rows in front of me. I've seen this family before. They have a little girl, about age 3, with baby-short curly hair- the kind of baby hair that has never been cut because it hasn't really grown at all yet. She has fair skin and blue eyes with flaming red hair, a round face and dimples in both cheeks. And she is really loud. Especially when she doesn't get her way, she decides to be very vocal. As they walked into the chapel the mother led the group, a Yoda backpack slung over her right shoulder. The Yoda backpack was made to look like Yoda rather than a bag. The arms reached up on the shoulders where the straps of a back back would be, and the legs were positioned to give the effect of Yoda piggybacking on his carrier. It was kind of cool looking, and hilarious as she came in with Yoda's realistic head bobbing on her back. As she day down she kind of tossed the back and Yoda ended up with his elbow resting on the back of the bench and his face smiling at me as if he'd turned around to say "see you, I do". I was grateful when Yoda fell forward and looked another way.
The talks focused on the atonement. Which is something that I always feel like I don't understand. It is all encompassing, bigger than my finite self can comprehend at the moment. The Atonement is this thing that enables change, makes better the hurts that happen as a result of our own behavior, and the behavior of others over which we have no control. No one is beyond the reach of His divine love and there is nothing that can't be overcome when the Atonement is involved. Any price that needed to be paid or will need to be paid is already settled and I am absolved of any "debt" owed as long as I believe that he can do that. Logically I understand all this. In essence the Atonement is the center of this "plan of happiness" because it is the only way that the plan can be accomplished.
It seems so simple, right? Just look and live. And yet it is not as easy as that, is it? Is there some hard thing involved to accomplish? Some task(s)? Some quest? Sometimes I'm not sure what is involved actually, and I feel the pressure of paradox between what is my part in working out my salvation, and what is the Savior's part in saving me.
