Easter Gift

This Easter week-end, as you’re spending time with your family coloring Easter eggs, admiring new Easter dresses and suits (or bonnets), feasting on Easter dinner, and worshipping together at church, I hope you’ll spend a few moments alone with your Savior. Remember His brief time upon this earth and the moments leading up to His resurrection.

I’ll be honest, I find it difficult to think of the scourging and the crucifixion. What pain and agony He had to endure. But I’m grateful to know that because the pain and agony of NOT having each of us return to our Heavenly Father was greater than the pain of Gethsemane and Golgotha, our Savior chose to provide each of us the opportunity to return home. I’m grateful to know that His sacrifice, although offered to each and every one of us, was done for me personally. That because of His love for ME, I can have a personal relationship with HIM and with my Father in Heaven.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ is as personal as you allow it to be. You can think of Him taking upon Himself the sins of the world, of Him suffering in Gethsemane, of Him being scourged and beaten and ultimately crucified so that the world might be redeemed, or you can think of Him doing all those things for YOU. I hope that this year, you’ll take it personally.

I hope that this year, as you spend a few moments with your Savior, that you’ll remember that it was because of YOU that He died and was resurrected. Because of His love for YOU, He suffered, He bled, and He died. “Oh it is wonderful, that He should care for me enough to die for me.”

And when you do, remember too that His mission did not end on the cross. Christ overcame the cross, He overcame the tomb, and He rose triumphant to teach not just of His death but of His resurrection to His apostles, His disciples, and to those who would listen. He walked the earth, He ate fish and honeycomb, and He taught as a resurrected being. And when He left, angels declared that He would return.

Yes, Christ suffered, bled, and died for ME. But He will also return for ME and for you – because His Easter gift is personal and is given personally to all those who will accept it. Please accept it.

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Matthew 21:1-11

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Luke 22:31-34

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John 13:1-35

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Matthew 26:36-57

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Matthew 26:57-75

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Matthew 27:1-2, 11-25