Bridging the 33-Year Gap

I wonder how many of my blog posts could start with the phrase "I found this on Facebook and thought it was worth sharing here." This one certainly applies.

I love the lyrics, especially in comparison with the previous version. There are a few parts I would tweak, but the part I really want to blog about is the final verse. In that verse, he transitioned smoothly from a Christmas message to an Easter message. The transition was a smooth one partly because both messages center around Jesus Christ.

Christmas and Easter are two separate holidays about as far apart from each other as they could be, chronologically. The actual events commemorated by Christmas and Easter could hardly be farther apart, either, as one of them is the birth of Christ and the other is His death and resurrection. But I like trying to connect the two thoughts because even though Christmas is all about Jesus' birth, it's important to remember what He was born to do.

Yesterday, I said that we each have a purpose. The same was also true for Jesus. In my opinion, He was born mostly so that He could die. Yes, there were a lot of sermons and miracles, and He organized the church while He was on the Earth, but the major thing He needed to do was the Atonement. Next to that, the most important thing to be done was to break the bands of death. At Christmas, we emphasize the Savior's birth, but being born was literally just the beginning of the things Jesus would do for us during His mortal life, and if He hadn't done those things, I don't think His birth would have mattered as much.

At the same time, Easter could not have been possible without Christmas. In order to break the bands of death, Jesus had to experience death after a period of mortality that began with His birth. In order to accomplish the Atonement, He first had to live a perfect, mortal life. The Atonement and Resurrection were probably the two most important accomplishments of Jesus' mortal life, but neither of them would have been possible if Jesus' hadn't had a mortal life. Jesus was born to die for us, but in order to die for us, He first needed to be born.

The gap between Christmas and Easter seems like a large one, and it probably exists for a reason - to emphasize His birth or His death, respectively, but I like the idea about thinking of the two thoughts together. The Child born pure and innocent in Bethlehem was just as pure and innocent when He died for us on Calvary. Through Resurrection, He brought us a hope for a better life, just as He did on the night that He was born. The bookends of Jesus' life are why Jesus means so much to us. Putting those bookends together gives us a deeper perspective of the meaning and impact of both His life and His death. At the very least, I personally have benefitted from thinking of Christmas and Easter together. I hope you have, too.