Thoughts on Easter

What an overwhelming moment captured so beautifully on canvas.  Could you imagine being Mary?  Here she believes that the body of the Lord that she loves so dearly has been taken and desecrated.  Although, the Savior rose Lazarus from the dead, the idea that the Savior, Himself,  could walk again was, I'm sure, far beyond the reaches of her imagination.  Even after seeing Him, she first assumed He was a gardener, again not realizing, or even hoping for, the possibility that her Lord might rise again.  

Then what joy must have filled her heart when realization dawned on her mind.  What faith she must have had to believe.  She witness the greatest of miracles.  He who once was dead, now lives.  My heart can only imagine the magnitude of her joy.  

The resurrection is truly a miracle among miracles, but I cannot think of Easter without thinking of the event mere days earlier.  The suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane:  The Atonement.

I have often pondered what this time might have been like for the Savior and I know I fail miserably to even come close.  I think even of my darkest moment, ones in which I felt as if I had been removed from the presence of God and they are far from close to what the Savior experienced.  

We read in Matthew 27:46, "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?  that is to say, My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" Our Lord and Savior had to experience spiritual death.  He had to truly know what it must feel like to be removed from the presence of God, whereas, although my times have been dark, for me it was only as if I had been so.  Times that are so tremendously horrible that there are not even words for me to describe, He, our perfect example, had to endure more.

And then to imagine that He not only felt what I had felt, but "...he hath borne [the] griefs, and carried [the] sorrows" for all who were and ever would be (Isaiah 53:4).  The magnitude of that responsibility is beyond my power to comprehend.  And He did it willingly.  "Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." (Luke 22: 42, Emphasis added).  He knew that He would be wracked with the torments of hell, but out of love for us, and even more importantly, out of love for His Father in Heaven, He suffered all.

So on this day where much of our thinking lays in candy and Easter bunnies and plastic eggs, may we pause, for at least a moment, to think about the true meaning behind this day.  May we realize that without His actions during His life, His birth--which we celebrate so grandly-- would be like merely any other. May we remember that it is because of Him that some day we may return to live with our Father in Heaven some day.  May we understand that because of Him we can know true happiness; we can know love.  May we stop to realize that without Him, all would be for naught.

He lives!  And because He lives, we will too!