He Is Risen!

I can't help it. I have to say it. On this Easter morning, I woke early beside my beloved wife. I've set out Easter baskets while my almost grown kids still sleep. I went through a Sunday School lesson I was asked to teach last night for a sister who needed to be with her elderly mother in serious illness. The lesson is "I Am the Light of the World." I share my fervent belief that He is.


I have faith in Christ because I have relied on Him for comfort in repentance and distress. I have always felt of some positive power when I do. I have the firmest belief in a life after this because I have had too many positive spiritual impressions to deny it. I feel the reality of departed loved ones and ancestors I have known and some I have never known in this life except for a name, a little history, and a cold plot of ground where their earthly body lies. And I have handled and touched the bodies of those recently deceased from a tiny infant to my grandparents and a beloved nephew. I have been with families that mourn, my own and those in the church strong as well as weak in the faith. I have attended the services for those not of my faith. I have had the disturbing yet sacred experience of dressing the dead body of a member of our priesthood quorum in holy robes. The spirit goes on. And I do not doubt as it has been promised that the body will rise again because of the power of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection. We will all stand before Him. And I yearn and ache for the moment I will drop to my knees and wash His feet with my tears. And my hope is in His atoning power to save.

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I cannot, desert to his foes:
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I'll never - no, never, I'll never - no, never, 
I'll never - no, never, no, never forsake!