In the Hellenistic mindset which has defined western thinking for over two thousand years, time is viewed as linear 
Every day of the counting of the omer brings us one step closer and one step higher in our national and personal spiritual journeys.
-- moving from point a to point b. The Jewish and Biblical view of the world, on the other hand, sees specific dates and appointed times as gates through which time flows in a cyclical and upward spiral fashion. The Biblical festivals therefore are called “callings of holiness,” mikra’ei kodesh, in the sense that each is a gateway in the passage of time at which we are given the power to “call forth” the specific spark of spirituality and holiness ensconced within this appointed time.
Therefore the Passover season is not only a commemoration of the liberation that once was, but as a time that is ripe for renewed liberation from all the slavery and imprisonments that still confine us.
Shavout or the festival of the Receiving of the Torah is not only a commemoration of that awesome spiritual event but is rather a time of experiencing again the spiritual power of being filled with Hashem’s truth.
After the dramatic exodus from Egypt the Israelites had to count 49 days until they experienced the soul changing experience at Mount Sinai. The Bible declares:
“And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the omer of the waving; seven weeks shall there be complete; even unto the morrow after the seventh week shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall present a new meal-offering unto HaShem.”
The Bible also describes:
“And He [G-d] said: ‘certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be the token unto thee, that I have sent thee: when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.’ Sh’mot/Exodus 3:12]
These two verses are eternally linked.
This journey from Egypt to the giving of the Torah took 50 days but it required 49 days to prepare Israel for that event.
How do you lift a person out of slavery and bring him into the spiritually challenging and inspiring experience of the revelation of Sinai? How could a person who, as a slave, would not dare to look higher than the ground he walks on, ever yearn for the infinite possibilities of the Divine? The counting of the days between Pesach / Passover and Shavuot / Pentecost called Sefirat Ha-Omer -- the counting of the omer is focused on the soul changing experience. Every day of the counting of the omer brings us one step closer and one step higher in our national and personal spiritual journeys.
In the midst of that counting lays the month of Iyar . It is a month that brings together the powers of physical liberation experienced at the Exodus from Passover in the month of Nissan and prepares for the spiritual liberation at the foot of Mount Sinai during the month of Sivan. It connects the two eternally .
Rabbi Haggai London of the Yeshivat Hesder of Haifa points out that the month of Iyar is the month that actually unleashes that bridging.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook wrote years before the declaration of the State of Israel ,that “ the Month of Iyar, a month described in the ancient secret books as a month that absorbs the delicate structure of Israelite independence ( the national entity that was born out of Egypt on Passover) together with the Higher sensitivity of the spiritual light of torah ( the national spiritual awareness that was formed at Mount Sinai on Shavuot)( Eyn Ayah)
As a result we should have expected that the final days of redemption would be empowered by these days of Iyar. .
Rabbi Shlomo Rivlin , one of the students of the famed Sage and mystic the Gaon of Vilna wrote (Midrash Shlomo le Rav Shlomo Rivlin,”Doresh Tzion” page 72) many years before the establishment of the state of Israel that there were two days during the Sefirat ha-omer which would unleash great spiritual potential for the “building of the land” ( Binyan HaAretz). These days were the 20th day of the Omer and the 42nd day.
The 20th day corresponds to the 5th day of Iyar which was the Hebrew date of the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. The first stage of the building of a nation involved the physical liberation ensconced in the creation of a physical state.
The 42nd day of the Omer corresponds to the 27th day of Iyar which was the Hebrew date of the re-unification of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-day war. This was the beginning of the second more spiritual stage of the Divine plan.
The power month of Iyar became the vessel that was appointed from the beginning of time to bridge physical and the spiritual redemptions and thereby propel the Divine plan further ahead.
Let us hope to celebrate both the beginnings of physical redemption during this Yom Haatzmaut and the spiritual redemption of Jerusalem on Yom Yerushalayim with untainted joy.