Daily Scripture

John 16:27

For the Father himself loveth you …

I was listening to a talk today by President Russell M. Nelson from 1992. In it he shared the following experience that resonated with my soul about the depth of our Heavenly Father’s love for us. 

“I would like to share a remarkable quotation that I found in a rare book in London one day while searching through the library of the British Museum. It was published as a twentieth-century English translation of an ancient Coptic text. It was written by Timothy, Patriarch of Alexandria, who died in A.D. 385. This record refers to the creation of Adam. Premortal Jesus is speaking of his Father:

“He . . . made Adam according to Our image and likeness, and He left him lying for forty days and forty nights without putting breath into him. And He heaved sighs over him daily, saying, ‘If I put breath into this [man], he must suffer many pains.’” [“Discourse on Abbaton by Timothy, Archbishop of Alexandria,” Coptic Martyrdoms Etc. in the Dialect of Upper Egypt, vol. 4 of Coptic Texts, edited, with English translations, by E. A. Wallis Budge (London: British Museum, 1914; New York: AMS Press, 1977), p. 482; brackets appear in printed text. For comparison with related scriptures see Moses 3:7; 6:8–9, 22, 29.]

As President Nelson shared this possible conversation between the Father and Jesus, I was struck with the Father’s tender emotion at moving forward with His own plan for us, His children. He knew it was the right thing. And yet He, as a loving Father, might have hesitated to set it in motion because He knew it would be hard for us. 

For some reason, this image of His hesitation touches my heart. As a parent, how many times do we look at our own children (like sending them on a mission or something) and know it’s the right thing and the good thing and the necessary thing, but we hesitate for a moment—just because we love them so much and don’t want to watch them suffer to grow?

Our Father loves us deeper than we comprehend. It’s easy to think that because He sees all and knows all that He is somehow removed from the emotion of being our parent. But I don’t think He is. I think He is deeply invested in our pain and our struggle, even though He knows the necessity and the benefit of it.

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