Sunday, March 31, 2013

Easter


GethsemaneLizLemonSwindle

This past month all of the lessons for the youth have been focused on the Atonement.  I taught the first one of the month and I chose  the one on grace.  It taught me a lot.  I learned that the strength to do righteous things is also grace, not just the part of my sins that I can’t make up for.  I learned that the “SAVED BY GRACE” is the big emphasized part and the “after all that I can do” is the little miniscule part that hardly makes a blip on the screen.  Not that it’s any less needed, just that I’m not earning my way to heaven.  It’s a gift no matter what.
We had a lesson on the resurrection and heard  wonderful stories about families who lost members and how everything was alright because of the resurrection.  When the advisor asked for my thoughts on that, I’m sure she didn’t know what was coming.  I told the girls that knowing about resurrection doesn’t make death easy—that the story was simplistic and death is still unbearable, but that the resurrection and the assurance of immortality makes it better.
Today We were singing the Easter hymn —Christ the Lord is Risen Today.  It’s a really happy hymn and it makes me feel so good to sing it, but as we sang the 3rd verse about the sting of death,  I couldn’t help thinking about how Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died.  “Jesus wept.”  That famous verse that all young children learn because it’s the shortest.  He knew he would raise him.  He knew things would be alright.  He knew the sisters would only have to grieve a little while longer.  But, He wept for his friend.
I’m going to use a reference here that is so random, but it’s pretty pertinent.  “Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end.”   That’s from an excellent movie I made Keith watch with me this weekend,  The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  That’s my take on the atonement; on life; on the plan of salvation.
That brings me to something else.  I had to give a talk in December.  I earned a new scripture with that talk.  I definitely feel I own it.  It gives me joy—the real true joy.  Let me explain.  God’s plan has many names.  In Alma 41 it is called the plan of restoration, then in chapter 42 we get the terms plan of salvation, plan of happiness, plan of redemption and plan of mercy.  Those are the ones we all hear about and give obediently when we are asked in Sunday School.  I found a name I like better; one that means even more to me.  It is found it 2nd Nephi chapter 11 verse 5.  It says: 
“And also my soul delighteth in the covenants of the Lord which he hath made to our fathers; yea, my soul delighteth in his grace, and in his justice, and  power and mercy in the great and eternal plan of deliverance from death.”
Isn’t that the coolest verse ever?  THE GREAT AND ETERNAL PLAN FOR DELIVERENCE FROM DEATH.  I want to be delivered from death.  I want everyone I love to be delivered from death.  PLUS, it includes all the other cool things about the atonement—grace, justice, power and mercy.
I delight in that too.  I delight in Easter.  I delight in hope—the hope that is possible because of Easter.

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