3 Nephi 22: 7-8, 10

7 For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee.

8 In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.

10 For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.

These verses from Isaiah are beautiful, encouraging, hopeful, and easy to love! As I've memorized them, I've been thinking over the question why forsaking or turning away is even part of the process.

Many of our kids struggled to learn how to sleep. For each one of the kids at some point (for many of them, this happened multiple times), we had to let them cry it out - let them cry until they fell asleep without one of us coming in to soothe them. Many of our kids cried for a LONG time; it was a real ordeal for them to be separated from us when they need help the most. The next night, though, the child cried for a little bit, then fell asleep on their own; by the night after that, they could fall asleep all by themselves.

An idea from CS Lewis' Great Divorce that I love is that Jesus can heal every part of our life, sanctifying even the hardest moments: "They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory." 

So, I guess I would put these ideas together like this: we have things we need to learn that can only be learned through suffering. While that suffering is healed in a way that is beyond our understanding, it is real. Christ does come with great mercies and kindness toward us, even after our nights of what seem like never-ending darkness.



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