Easter Sunday at the Garden Tomb

Happy Easter!!!

We have church on Saturdays here, and since next week is General Conference and it is the beginning of the month, we had our Easter program last week. Yesterday we had fast and testimony meeting and next week is General Conference (but we are going to be in Galilee so I think we will be watching conference delayed)...

Anyway. Today is still Easter Sunday and we went to a sunrise service at the Garden Tomb. I believe the service today was Protestant. This morning was one of my highlights of the whole trip for sure, I loved it!!!

So before I post pictures from today, I have a few from other visits to the Garden because I don't think I have blogged about the Garden Tomb yet...

I really love signs that have English, Arabic, and Hebrew :-)

The Garden Tomb is one of the traditional places of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and burial. (the other popular one is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher) The tomb is owned and operated by a British organization that is multi-denominational. 

The Garden tomb was discovered in the 1880s, largely because this adjacent hill is believed to be Golgotha, the place where Christ was crucified. If you look closely, you can see that the mountain naturally has the face of a skull. You can really only see the eyes and nose, because the mouth is lower than the current ground reaches. "Golgotha" means "skull" (or place of the skull), so some scholars think that the hill of Calvary or Golgotha was literally a skull shaped hill. 

This is the inside of the tomb. It matches what archeologists and historians say the tomb of Christ would have looked like. The body would have been laid to rest inside the tomb and decompose for a year or so, and then the bones would be collected and put into an ossuary (bone box) and stored in the tomb. In this way, one tomb could be the burial place of multiple family members. 

And now for Easter:

We left the center at 5:30--about half of us walked and half took a van (I arranged the vans for those who wanted to join me, as I cannot walk the two large hills between us and the garden tomb). You can tell that it was still dark outside when we were in line this morning...

Sarah is so great. We kept standing up to sing during the service and she helped me up and back down every time. What a champ :-)

We JC students sat on these steps right in front of the tomb that they reserved for us--the Garden Tomb people like the Mormon University :-)

In front of the tomb--whether this actually was the tomb where Christ was laid to rest before He was resurrected or not, it was somewhere nearby here and I still enjoyed the opportunity to celebrate Easter in the general area where the Crucifixion and Resurrection occurred. 

Cousins :-)

The worship band--It was great! The service was a mixture of Christian Rock songs, prayers, a sermon, and communion (we got little olive wood cups to take home as souvenirs even though we did not participate in drinking the wine ;-})

I loved the worship through music that we were able to participate in

The tomb: I loved sitting there and reflecting on Jesus Christ while looking at a tomb that could have been his, or at least, one that looks the way His would have looked. I am so grateful for my Savior, my Redeemer. I know that He lived on this earth and that He continues to live. I know that because of his infinite and continuous Atonement, we can all be forgiven fully of all of our sins and that all of our shortcomings and mistakes and pains can be made whole. We are instructed to "be ye therefore perfect" (Matthew 5) and it is only in and through the atonement of Jesus Christ that we are able to do that. I cannot adequately express my feelings towards my Savior who has paid the price so that I don't have to. I am filled with love and gratitude on this day, a day of remembrance for the glorious event of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. He overcame death, He paid the price, He is the Savior of the World. as it says on a placard on the tomb "He is not here, for He is risen." He is not in that tomb, but He is very much in our lives each and every day when we believe in Him and rely on the glorious gift of His atonement. Christ doesn't just make up the difference, he makes the difference. and I write these words in His holy name, even Jesus Christ, amen.

Happy Easter! 

-E