4/12/2009: Easter talk

I had the opportunity to speak in our sacrament meeting for Easter Sunday this year. I had prepared lots of material, however the previous speaker took a great deal more time than expected, so I ended up giving a short summary of my sermon. What I boiled it down to were a few particulars about the Savior’s last hours on the earth. I used the image of me in May of 1999, as a 21-yr old, standing in the empty garden tomb, just outside the walls of old Jerusalem. That was a sacred moment for me. In my talk, I used that as the image to illustrate the journey that would be ahead of me, which I did not know at the time, in which I/we would rely on the Savior, His atonement and the redeeming grace of the gospel to get us to where we are today. We are constantly progressing in life (for good or ill) and “becoming”. We can attribute this privilege to Christ and His love for humankind. He gives us the choice to become what we choose to become. The empty tomb signifies many things, one of them being the Hope it gives the entire human race.