Death and Resurrection

Jesus was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

I hope you will forgive me for appropriating the first two sentences of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol for my Easter post, but I think it makes a good point. Just as readers don’t understand why it’s so extraordinary that Jacob Marley would visit Scrooge unless they know that Marley is dead, we don’t understand how extraordinary the resurrection is unless we know that Jesus was dead, and what death has meant for humanity from the beginning.

Death has always been the great unknown for human kind. Life, it seems, is more than just chemical reactions in an organic frame. The people we love have personalities and creativity, they have passions and quirks. Is it possible that all of that uniqueness, all of that nuance that makes us who we are would be simply erased? As Job asks, “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14)

Elder Heartthrob

I was watching General Conference, the bi-annual, two-day event in which worldwide church leaders address the church via television broadcast (which I have written about here and here), yesterday when, during the final hymn sung by a choir from the Missionary Training Center, my wife exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! There’s David Archuleta!”

I didn’t recognize him, but when I looked I could see the name tag: Elder Archuleta.

I was a little bothered about this sudden outburst from my wife, but I have since been assured that she was only excited because he grew up in her aunt’s ward in Utah, that’s all.