"Our Light Affliction"

As William Tyndale was translating the New Testament, he came across 2 Corinthians 5:18--"And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation." Only the Greek text he was translating from didn't use the word reconciliation. The word he needed to properly express the concept just didn't exist in English. So he made one up: At-one-ment.

God hath given to us the gospel of the Atonement.

We usually speak about the Atonement of Jesus Christ in context of how He suffered and died for our sins. Indeed, that is the meat and bones of His great atoning sacrifice, the promise that if we make sacred covenants and keep them until the end, we may be allowed to pass the immeasurable gulf of sin that separates us from heaven--"for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Cor. 15:21)

But we also know that all that is unjust or unfair about this life can be made right through the Atonement as well. Brigham Young once said "every trial and experience you have passed through is necessary for your salvation." The thing about our mortal existence is that problems don’t just go away. Things don’t work out. Your heart gets broken. You feel life and time itself relentlessly dragging you through the dirt, without even pausing to notice you. But, because Jesus Christ suffered and bled out his love for us--“our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." (2 Cor. 4:17).