how to celebrate easter in remembrance

my sister-in-law had this link on her blog, and i couldn't pass up the opportunity to share it.

part of the reason we love the name pace is because it means "passover" in hebrew. we discovered we were pregnant while teaching the old testament in gospel doctrine at our church. we had become emotionally linked to this particular "holiday" after teaching the passover lesson and its beautiful imagery and symbolism. the first passover occurred when moses was trying to convince pharaoh to allow the israelites a 3-days' journey into the wilderness to make sacrifices to their God (exodus 3:18)--this eventually escalated to a request to free the israelites completely. having been in captivity for hundreds of years within the egyptian culture, it was moses' job to remind the israelites of their sacred heritage through the covenant of the fathers (otherwise known as the abrahamic covenant); performing the sacred ordinances and sacrifices were part of that covenant. pharaoh refused, and the "10 plagues" began.

the final, and worst, plague was the death of every firstborn in all the land (exodus 11:3-6). to protect the israelites (whom the Lord interestingly called His firstborn), the Lord instructed them to sacrifice a lamb without blemish and to take the blood and mark the doorway of their houses. the blood would be a token to the destroying angel to pass over that particular house, and the firstborn within would live (exodus 12:12-14). the whole purpose of the old testament is to look forward to Christ. the sacrificial blood on the doorways wasn't merely a token to escape mortal death, it was a token of the liberty, redemption, and sanctification we would receive through Christ's sacrificial and atoning blood. here was a promise to escape separation from God.

Christ could have dismissed the destroying angel, He could have chosen a "passing over". He instead chose to cover our doorways with His life.

it is not His sacrificial death we celebrate, but His atoning life--3 days after hanging on the cross, Christ rose from the cold, stone tomb, and walked. His resurrection draws all men to Him (3 Nephi 27:14), brings about the conditions of repentance (Helaman 14:18), allows mercy to claim the penitent (Alma 42:23), loosens the bands of death and sin that bind us down to destruction (Alma 7:11-15), ransoms mankind from the effects of the fall (2 Nephi 9), makes intercession for all the children of men (2 Nephi 2:6-9).