Happy Easter

We found a little bunny who wanted to wish everyone a happy Easter! As you can see, we have much to be thankful for this Easter. Not only do we have a beautiful little girl, who thankfully, looks a lot more like her mother than she does me, but this Easter morning, my sister Becky had a little girl. Most of all, we are thankful this Easter for our Savior.



I was moved by the Easter talk Elder Holland gave this last conference. Below is a video with excerpts from the talk:



Also below is a talk that I am giving this morning on the atonement:

After partaking of the Last Supper, and before His great Atonement, the Savior offered a closing prayer on behalf of His disciples and us—He prayed that we might be one, even as He and His Father are one. [John 17] After this great “intercessory” prayer, Jesus and the Eleven sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives. There, on the slope of the mount, is an olive orchard known as Gethsemane. He instructed eight of His apostles to sit near the entrance of the orchard and pray. The Savior took Peter, James, and John with Him in the orchard, “and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.” [Matt. 26:37] He told the Three: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.” [Matt. 26:38]

Our Savior then went deeper into the orchard, “and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” [Matt. 26:39] As a young missionary, Elder Orson F. Whitney, who later served in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, had a powerful dream in which he saw the Savior in the garden: “One night I dreamed … that I was in the Garden of Gethsemane, a witness of the Savior’s agony. … I stood behind a tree in the foreground. … Jesus, with Peter, James, and John, came through a little wicket gate …. Leaving the three Apostles there, after telling them to kneel and pray, He passed over to the other side, where He also knelt and prayed … ‘Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt.’ As He prayed the tears streamed down …. I was so moved at the sight that I wept also, out of pure sympathy with His great sorrow. My whole heart went out to Him. I loved Him with all my soul and longed to be with Him as I longed for nothing else.” [Holland, Ensign, Mar. 2008]

You are well familiar with the story. Sleep overcame the Three, Judas betrayed the Lord, and, that same night, “all the disciples forsook him, and fled.” [Matt. 26:56] As the Savior Himself later explained, “I have trodden the wine-press alone.” [D&C 133:50] The utter loneliness and excruciating pain of the Atonement begun in Gethsemane reached its zenith when, after unspeakable abuse at the hands of Roman soldiers, Jesus Christ was crucified. [Holland, supra] After carrying out His mission in the flesh to glorious consummation [Jesus the Christ, p.614], Christ exclaimed in a loud voice of holy triumph: “It is finished.” [John 19:30] “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” [Luke 23:46] The earth quaked and the veil of the temple was rent in twain. [Matt. 27:51]

“In some manner, actual and terribly real though to man incomprehensible, the Savior took upon Himself the burden of the sins of mankind from Adam to the end of the world.” [Jesus the Christ, p. 569; 2 Ne. 9:21] As the angel told King Benjamin, Christ would suffer “even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people.” [Mosiah 3:7] In the Savior’s own words: “For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent. . . . Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—” [D&C 19:16-18]

This is not all. Not only did Jesus Christ take upon the sins of the world, but, as the prophet Alma foretold, he also took upon the infirmities of His people, “that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.” [Alma 7:12] In other words, as revealed to the prophet Joseph Smith, He that ascended up on high, also “descended below all things,” so he could “comprehend[] all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth.” [D&C 88:6]

As explained by the Lord in His great intercessory prayer, the Atonement makes it possible for us to be unified with Christ and the Father in glory, perfection, and love. The Savior prayed: “And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. . . . That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us . . . . And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; . . . And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” [John 17:19-26]

When Elder Whitney witnessed the sacrifice of our Savior to make this unity for which He prayed possible, he said: “My whole heart went out to Him. I loved Him with all my soul and longed to be with Him as I longed for nothing else.” At the end of his dream, Elder Whitney saw the Savior and his apostles about to depart and ascend into heaven. He exclaimed: “I could endure it no longer. I ran from behind the tree, fell at His feet, clasped Him around the knees, and begged Him to take me with Him. I shall never forget the kind and gentle manner in which He stooped and raised me up and embraced me. It was so vivid, so real that I felt the very warmth of His bosom against which I rested. Then He said: ‘No, my son; these have finished their work, and they may go with me; but you must stay and finish yours.’ Still I clung to Him. Gazing up into His face—for He was taller than I—I besought Him most earnestly: ‘Well, promise me that I will come to You at the last.’ He smiled sweetly and tenderly and replied: ‘That will depend entirely upon yourself.’” [Holland, supra]

Through the Atonement, Jesus Christ has done his part so that we might be unified with the Him and the Father in glory, perfection, and love. We will be resurrected, and we can be sanctified and made clean so that we are worthy to dwell in the Father’s presence. We also have an Advocate who “was in all points tempted like as we are” and who is capable of “feeling of our infirmities.” [Heb. 4:1] The rest now depends entirely upon ourselves.