Abraham and The Little Mermaid

Jacob 4:5 refers to Abraham offering up his son Isaac in the wilderness.  This was a very hard scripture story for me to understand when I was younger.  When I was a child, it didn't bother me because I knew that Abraham didn't really have to go through with it.  An angel stopped him and a ram was found to sacrifice instead, but as I got older I realized that Abraham would have done it if those things hadn't happened and that was a little hard for me to swallow.  Why would the Lord ask such a thing?  How could Abraham be willing to do such a thing?  I'm sure there are many levels of this that I have yet to understand, but what I do understand is what Jacob points out in verse 5--it was in "similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son."

Thinking about things in light of Abraham laying Isaac on the alter brings a new dimension to the Atonement and the sacrifice of the Savior, it makes me think of how hard it must have been for Heavenly Father to withdraw his spirit from his perfect son, if only for a short time, and leave him on his own during his time of need.  I first understood the Father's sacrifice when I was in high school.  You are going to laugh, or maybe cringe, at the way I came to understand it.

I was watching Disney's The Little Mermaid.  For those who might not know the movie, King Triton is the king of the sea and his daughter, Ariel, signed a contract with the sea witch that, at the end of the movie, results in Ariel belonging to the witch.  The witch is about to turn her into a pitiful piece of seaweed when King Triton shows up and agrees to take his daughter's place.  By doing so, Ursula, the witch, gains control of the whole ocean.  She gains his crown and his powerful trident.  I remember watching this play out on the TV in my basement and understanding that Triton was weak.  He couldn't bear to watch his daughter suffer, so he sacrificed everything and everyone in the ocean to save her.  I remember feeling very grateful to Heavenly Father for being strong and loving enough to watch his Only Begotten son suffer and die so that I could live with him again someday.
 
At the time, I thought a Disney movie was an odd way to learn a gospel lesson, but I knew it was effective for me, a seminary student studying Abraham with a questioning mind who happened to watch The Little Mermaid that same week.  Now I have many other similar life experiences that have given me a testimony that Heavenly Father, through the Spirit, teaches us each important lessons in a myriad of ways.  He teaches things to each of us using the materials that are in our own lives to work with.  It is one reason to make sure you keep your life full of materials that don't drive the spirit away.  Give him something he can work with and he will teach you amazing things in very simple ways.