Heavenly Father loves all of us infinitely. We are each one of His jewels. We are incredibly valuable to Him, and we are all worthy of His individual time and attention … which is why we all have access to the redeeming and endowing powers of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Just as diamonds form over millions of years under immense pressure, so to do we become purified and become more like our Heavenly Father over eons of time … all while being tried, proved, and purified with challenges, adversity, trials, and tribulations.

Growth and progression is a process. It is not a single event. It involves the small and the simple more than it does the spectacular. We are purified and become more like our Heavenly Father line upon line, here a little and there a little, precept upon precept.

It could be likened to climbing a ladder. We progress from the bottom rung to the top rung, rung by rung. There is no other way.

The mechanics of progressing from one rung of the ladder to the next involves grace.

Grace is the secret ingredient that enables progress.

Grace is simply an enabling power.

It involves someone of higher station (like our Heavenly Father or Jesus Christ) reaching down and pulling us up. This is something they want to do more than anything else.

In short, Heavenly Father has clearly stated that it is His work and His glory to bring about the immortality and eternal life of man and women.

Glory = Intelligence = Light and Truth.

Light and Truth = one’s capacity to “give life,” or one’s capacity to show grace and to lift another.

(It could also be said that the measure of one’s true “intelligence” is quantified by one’s capacity to show grace, or one’s capacity to serve and to lift up and to give even greater life to another human being.)

The doctrine of progression is clear. We go from (1) grace to grace, (2) grace for grace.

In other words, the way we progress from one rung on the ladder to the next higher rung on the ladder (or as we go from “one grace to another grace” … or one level of progress to the next higher level of progression) is by showing grace to someone else (“grace for grace” … or as we show grace to someone else, we become recipients of grace ourselves).

As we reach down and lift someone else up, the Heavens reach down and lift us up.

As we show grace to others (service, kindness, etc) … we become recipients of Heavenly Grace. We receive far more than we ever give.

Step by step, not only do we become more like our Heavenly Father, but we are healed of our heartaches and hurts, and in time, we are made whole (not all of which will occur while in the mortal life).

In Hebrew, the root word for “love” is “to give.”

To “love,” or to “give,” is what grace is all about.

Consider the three instances of the word “give” or “gave” in the following statement:

Christ gave us life by giving his life, and in doing so he was given even greater life by one mightier than Himself – our Heavenly Father (the Atonement constitutes the ultimate grace for grace act ever transpired on earth).

In the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross at Calvary, two significant things happened:

(1) It was impressed upon Christ the enormity of the work that was going to have to be done to make us all whole.
(2) It was impressed upon Christ how unworthy each of us were of His grace, and He had to willingly choose each of us (despite our unworthiness) over His own life … not just mortal life, but life afterwords, because now He was going to have to do the work necessary to dry our tears, heal our hearts, lift us up, and make us whole.

It was the Garden and the Cross that bound us to Him, and Him to us.

The Cross was not the finishing act of the Atonement, but the finishing act of grace that then allowed Heavenly Father to endow Him with the grace necessary to redeem us. The Atonement is ongoing. Christ is not in the Heavens playing endless golf, totally unaware of our heartaches and our prayers and pleas. He is intimately aware of each of us. He is eager to give us aid. He stands at the door and knocks, and when we open the door, He is overjoyed to enter.

We are all unworthy of Christ’s life because although we have all been hurt and injured by others, none of us are innocent. We have all hurt and injured others. Who are we to demand the healing balm of the Atonement when we are guilty ourselves?

When we let go of our demands for justice (of the party that we feel robbed us … and who is incapable of making us whole) … and we look to the source that has the power to heal us (Jesus Christ), we initiate a process that allows us to receive mercy as we show mercy, to receive grace and healing as we show grace.

When we love and serve others, especially as we are prompted by the Holy Ghost, when we forget ourselves and get to work, the floodgates of divine compassion open.

Like Christ, when we give others life by giving of our own life, the Heavens are touched with divine compassion (despite our own unworthiness), and the powers of Heavens are unlocked, and they are able to reach down and to lift us up to a high plane, and we all experience the miracle of the Atonement.

It really is not that complicated. Experiencing the Atonement of Jesus Christ is as simple as reaching down and holding up the hands that hang down, and to willingly strengthen the feeble kneed. As we show others kindness, we are healed of our hurts and in time we are made whole.

It really is all about love and service.