A Season of Celebration of Deliverance

Easter and Passover are not single, individual days.  Rather they are each seasons of celebration. Easter Sunday is the culmination of what's known among Christians as Holy Week, but the whole Easter season could be said to begin with Ash Wednesday and Lent, six weeks earlier, and end with the Feast of the Ascension, forty days after Easter Sunday.  The Passover celebration also runs for a week, this year beginning at dusk on Friday, March 30th and running until dusk on Saturday, April 7th.  Both are occasions of prayer, worship, and celebration, often filled with family and favorite traditions.

Because of the way these celebrations are calculated each year, based on astronomical calculations, they seldom align to the same days, even though they often overlap.  But they have much in common.  Christ, in the last week of his earthly ministry, had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.  But he also knew it was the last week of his life.  The Passover was observed as the celebration of the delivery of the Children of Israel from captivity in Egypt.  However, King Benjamin explained that the Lord showed the Children of Israel "many signs and wonders, and types, and shadows" to point them toward Christ (Mosiah 3:15).  As Elder Boyd K Packer explained, "When the plague of death was decreed upon Egypt, each Israelite family was commanded to take a lamb—firstborn, male, without blemish. This paschal lamb was slain without breaking any bones, its blood to mark the doorway of the home. The Lord promised that the angel of death would pass over the homes so marked and not slay those inside. They were saved by the blood of the lamb." (Who is Jesus Christ?, March 2008 Ensign). Centuries later, the Blood of the Lamb of God was shed to save the Children of Israel.  The type of the Messiah, to which Israel was pointed, was accomplished by Christ.

When I consider what the atonement and resurrection mean for me there is a wide range of emotions that come.  To think that Christ willingly subjected Himself to everything He went through is amazing to me.  He did that out of His love for His Father and for us. He had everything and yet He willingly did this great thing.  Well did the angel call it "condescension."  What an incomprehensible opportunity and blessing He gave to us in this unselfish act.

This year the Sunday sessions of General Conference fall on Easter, something I always think is kind of special when it happens.  This year, one of the hymns sung in conference was one of my favorites, a hymn titled "Praise to the Lord, the All Mighty", written by a man named Joachim Neander.  Neander lived out his life in Germany during the 17th century.  I first learned this hymn while I was on my mission in Germany, I first learned the hymn in the language Neander wrote it.  I love it.  The translation in our hymn book today was done by Catherine Winkworth some two hundred years after Neander wrote it.  While its obviously a good translation, I think it misses ever so subtly some of the praise and gratitude of the original.  But it is still very good, I still love it. I love the sentiment, as well as the music.

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation!
Join the great throng,
Psaltery, organ and song,
Sounding in glad adoration!

Praise to the Lord! Over all things he gloriously reigneth.
Borne as on eagle wings, safely his Saints he sustaineth.
Hast thou not seen
How all thou needest hath been
Granted in what he ordaineth?

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy way and defend thee.
Surely his goodness and mercy shall ever attend thee.
Ponder anew
What the Almighty can do,
Who with his love doth befriend thee. 

Praise to the Lord! Oh, let all that is in me adore him!
All that hath breath, join with Abraham's seed to adore him!
Let the "amen"
Sum all our praises again,
Now as we worship before him.