Our Cub Scouts went caroling to an old folks home. The elderly people there were moved. It is remarkable, the power we have to affect each other.

And we have a new baby. She is helpless. To a certain extent, we even had to teach her how to nurse. It is a great gift, her helplessness. It is the gift that makes us parents.

Christ made himself helpless. He became helpless and witless, a newborn baby. Later, in the atonement, he put himself into dependency on each one of us. That is his greatest gift. It is likely the core of how the Atonement works.

Nephi celebrates this dependency as the condenscension of God, and says it is the great manifestation of God’s love. Very true, but it is also true that love itself is dependency. God’s love for us is itself the condescension, because it inherently puts Him into our power. God was under the sword from the beginning. It isn’t mysticism and it isn’t atemporal to speak of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.