This past weekend I had an interesting experience. While pinning a curtain I somehow stabbed a nerve in my thumb. Instead of bleeding there was hardly a pin mark, but the results were excruciating. At first I could not move my thumb from the intense pain, and then my fingers, hand and finally my arm up to my shoulder. Not knowing what happened, the panic only added to the severity of the event. I have not cried that hard in years and for a good minute I was on the verge of passing out. The pain eventually numbed and then drew back and now two days latter there is only a faint memory of the event in my thumb.
Why I tell this story is because I would say that I was in agony. Tears were falling and falling into unconsciousness looked very good to me. When I read this verse in Luke 22:44 the memory of the pain came back to me and wondered how my Savior survived when I was willing to give up enduring the small amount of pain that was afflicted on me. The description of the event is as follows:
44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Footnotes will take you to Mosiah 3:7 and Doctrine and Covenants 19:18:
7And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people.
18Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—
I've heard it said that he had to be born as part immortal so he could survive the agony of the atonement, so that he would not die before it was completed. I'm sure that this is not the only reason, but I cannot imagine what he had to go through. And he did it for us - he did it for me.
While reading through these sections and contemplating Christ's sacrifice, another another human limitation I have was brought to light, a limitation that I believe I can work on but will never be able to overcome in this life - my inability to really understand how Christ could love me that much.
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