Description
Adam and Aaron
This story was shared years ago by Sister Margaret Nadauld. She tells of a time when she stood looking out the window of the family home as Adam and Aaron, her five-year old twin sons, went speeding by on their bicycles. They were going too fast.
Suddenly Adam crashed, and it was terrible. Mom said, all she “could see was a twist of handlebars and tires and arms and legs.”
Aaron slid to a stop on his bike, threw it down, and ran to his brother. Adam was pretty banged up. Both knees were skinned and he was bleeding from a head wound. Of course, he was crying.
Gently, Aaron helped extricate his brother. He looked at the wounds. Then, deciding Adam needed help, Sister Nadauld said, “he did the dearest thing. He picked his brother up and carried him home—or tried to. This wasn’t very easy because they were the same size, but he tried.”
Half dragging, half carrying, the wounded Adam, Aaron finally reached the porch where Mom met them. To her surprise, it was not Adam, the wounded, who was crying, but Aaron the rescuer.
“Why are you crying?” she asked.
His answer was simple. “Because Adam hurts.”
That is the Savior. I testify of Him—the compassionate Christ. The One whose mercy is “abundant”; a “multitude.” He is the one whose experiences have given him the will to succor us or run to our aid.
Our agency is sacred. He will not violate it by imposing on us that which we do not ask for or invite, but He stands waiting and at the first prodigal impulse to look toward home, he will run to us with the arms of mercy.
Why go through life alone when you can go “side by side with a God?”
Sources:
Margaret D. Nadauld, “Come unto Christ,” Ensign, May 1998, 64-65
Mosiah 16:21
1 Nephi 8
President Howard W. Hunter said, “Why face life’s burdens alone, Christ asks, or why face them with temporal support that will quickly falter? To the heavy laden it is Christ’s yoke, it is the power and peace of standing side by side with a God that will provide the support, balance, and the strength to meet our challenges and endure our tasks here in the hardpan field of mortality” (Ensign, Nov. 1990, p. 18).
