Happy Easter, 2011

Anytime I smell vinegar, I think of coloring Easter eggs.  Never could figure what eggs & bunnies have to do with Easter, but it’s all good (all the time).  My favorite Easter candy is Robin Eggs.  I can’t have a bag of Robin Eggs around without eating every single one of them. 



Photo from internet



My wife has the completely foreign to me ability of opening up a candy bar, taking one bite and leaving the rest to rot.  Three days or more will go by and there it will sit, beckoning in deafening shrieks for me to come eat it.  When I finally relent, Emilie notices right off, and it never fails to coincide with her urge to take another bite or two.  Although it baffles and frustrates me, I really admire that about her.



Photo from internet



I grew up in a not particularly religious household.  I mean, I knew that Easter was about more than the Easter Egg hunt at the Spanish Fork ball park, potato salad and Easter baskets filled with weird grass and candy, but those are the things that I remember most.  One of my favorite family memories is an Easter picnic we spent out in the mountains west of Eureka, Utah.  I was but a young lad, but I remember that it was a lot of fun playing softball in a meadow peppered with sage brush and cactus.  Yes, the emphasis of Easter in our house was candy and colored eggs, but my Mom did teach me that God lives, that He is my Father and that His Son is my Savior.  Mom and Dad had their worldly challenges over the years, but they were good people whom I love very much, and am proud to be counted among their posterity.  The seeds of faith that my parents planted in me, along with a lot of sunshine and living water that I received from others along my path, gave me the ability to give some of that faith back to them when they were preparing to pass into eternity, and, hopefully, make their journey a little easier. 



Mom and me in 1993






Good ol' Pops in 2003

 




Mom and Dad in Japan visiting my brother Mike

 

My parents when they dropped me off at the Missionary Training Center in 1987



These days, though I still enjoy an egg-shaped Reese’s and a Robin Egg or two (bags), I’m pretty clear on what Easter is really about, albeit I know that I will never comprehend in this life what is the breadth, length, depth and height of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge (Ephesians 3:18-19).  One of my favorite things to read on Easter is the Gospel of John, chapter 20.  In these scriptures, Mary Magdalene has come to the tomb of Jesus early Sunday morning.  The stone had been rolled away, and two angels were sitting on it.  Not knowing what to think, Mary ran to where the Apostles were and told them Jesus’ body was missing.  Peter and John rushed to the tomb.  John refers to himself as “that disciple that Jesus loved”.  I love that.  John had a great knowledge of the Lord’s love for him.  I also loved that they ran to the tomb.  They didn’t just jog, or hurry, they sprinted.  It says, “So they ran both together, and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulcher.”  John let Peter enter the tomb first, after which John went in, saw, and believed, “for as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.”  After Peter and John went home, Mary stayed at the empty tomb and wept.  Christ appeared to her, but she did not recognize Him.  I can see Mary in my mind, her eyes full of tears, her hands over her face, her head bowed in sorrow, maybe even despair, asking the gardener where to find Him.  Upon hearing her name spoken by the Savior in the familiar voice of her friend: 

“Mary,”

Mary cries out, “Master.”  Because the next line spoken is Jesus saying, “Touch me not”, and the more accurate translation is, “Hold me not”, it squeezes my heart to know that Mary’s first impulse was the same as mine will be when he speaks my name. 



From LDS Church site



Happy Easter to all of you who read this post.  Enjoy your family get togethers, your egg hunts, your potato salads.  Enjoy your Easter baskets full of plastic grass and delicious treasures.  I recommend Robin Eggs to all of you whose teeth are sweet.  Along with all the fun, I would be honored if you would join me in singing the words of the sacred hymn:  “Oh sweet, the joy this sentence gives, I know that my Redeemer lives!” (I Know That My Redeemer Lives –LDS Hymn Book, Number 136)

Though it was told long ago, it remains true today

And I also testify, Christ will show the way

Think on him, lean on him, for in the story He dies

It wasn’t for you that Christ came, this is what Satan lies

He wants you to give in to despair, and on the ground to stay

But remember, dear friends, on that glorious Easter Day

Jesus Christ did rise

-John Barney, 2005



From LDS Church site



Thanks for listening…jb