He is Risen! He is Risen!

I love Easter. It reminds me of Spring, of new birth, and of course Cadbury Mini Eggs. As a child, Easter was about new dresses, the Easter bunny, and Easter egg hunts at Grandma's. But now, as an adult Easter has taken on a greater significance, and I appreciate this celebration more than ever. That's why when I ran across this article this morning, and it made me kind of sad.

"It's Easter—that most pleasant of springtime holidays—when children stuff themselves with marshmallows and stain their fingers with pastel dyes. In reality, of course, Easter is about something darker and more fantastic. It's a celebration of the final act of the Passion, in which Jesus rose from his tomb in his body three days after his execution, to reside in heaven with God. The Gospels insist on the veracity of this supernatural event. The risen Lord "ate barbecued fish [Luke] and walked through doors [John]," is how a friend of mine, an Episcopalian priest, puts it. This rising—the Resurrection—remains at the center of the Christian faith, the narrative climax of every creed. Jesus died and rose again so that all his followers could, eventually, do the same. This story has strained the credulity of even the most devoted believer. For, truly, it's unbelievable."

"Resurrection—the physical reality, not the metaphorical interpretation—puts everything we imagine about heaven to the test. [Even though] 80 percent of Americans say they believe in heaven, few of us have the slightest clue about what we mean. Heaven, everyone agrees, is the good place you go after death, a reward for struggle and faithfulness on earth. In most of our popular conceptions, we have bodies in heaven: selves, consciousness, identity. We do things. People yearn for reunions in heaven with friends and relatives—and even with their pets. "I want to lay my head on Grandma Lucy's lap," the Christian memoirist Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in an essay. "I want to shell field peas with Fannie Belle and listen to Schubert with Earl." Some people imagine heaven as the place where their most material yearnings are fulfilled. The evangelist Billy Graham once spoke of driving a yellow Cadillac in heaven; the heroine of Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones eats peppermint ice cream; suicide bombers in the Middle East fantasize about the sexual ministrations of 72 dark-eyed virgins. In all these visions, embodiment is the crux of the matter. If you don't have a body in heaven, then what kind of heaven are you hoping for?"

"Despite the insistence of the most conservative branches of all three Western religions on resurrection as an incontrovertible fact, most of us are circumspect. The number of Americans who say they believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ has dropped 10 points since 2003 to 70 percent, according to the most recent Harris poll; only 26 percent of Americans think that they'll have bodies in heaven, according to a 1997 Time/CNN poll."

"And so, the paradox. Resurrection may be unbelievable, but belief in a traditional heaven requires it. I think often of Jon D. Levenson, a Jewish scholar at Harvard Divinity School who hopes to bring the idea of resurrection back to mainstream Judaism, where it has been lost in practice for generations. I visited him one cold November afternoon because, as a literal-minded skeptic, I wanted him to explain to me how it works. How does God put bodies—burned in fire or pulverized in war—back together again? Levenson looked at me, eyes twinkling, and said, "It's no use to ask, 'If I had a lab at MIT, how would I try to resurrect a body?' The belief in resurrection is more radical. It's a supernatural event. It's a special act of grace or of kindness on God's part." For my part, I don't buy it. I do, however, leave the door open a crack for radical acts of grace and kindness—and for humbling ourselves before all that we don't understand."

Adapted from the forthcoming book Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination With the Afterlife by Lisa Miller. To be published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins. Copyright © 2010 by Lisa Miller.


I am so thankful that I have the knowledge that He is Risen! And we will rise too! We can read about this truth in Alma 40. "The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame."

And what great truths can we learn from this months Ensign articles:

• 1. We have come to earth to learn, to live, to progress in our eternal journey toward perfection.

• 2. Some remain on earth but for a moment, while others live long upon the land. The measure is not how long we live but rather how well we live.

• 3. Then comes death and the beginning of a new chapter of life.

• 4. This new chapter leads to that glorious day of resurrection, when spirit and body will be reunited, never again to be separated.

I am so grateful for these truths! "He lives all glory to His name! He lives, My Savior still the same! Oh, sweet the joy this sentence gives: I know that my Redeemer Lives!"

HAPPY EASTER!!!