If Jesus Came to Church

In the most recent general conference Bishop Caussé asked, “Have you ever asked yourself what it would be like if the Savior visited your ward or branch next Sunday?... What classes would Jesus visit? I wouldn’t be surprised if He visited the Primary children first. He would probably kneel down and speak to them eye to eye. He would express His love to them, tell them stories, congratulate them on their drawings, and testify of His Father in Heaven. His attitude would be simple, genuine, and without affectation. Can we do likewise?”  I believe that he is correct—the Primary is in my mind the most likely place that the Savior would go.  The way he spent His time among the Nephites certainly bears this out.  When He first arrived, the multitude did go “forth one by one until they had all gone forth, and did see with their eyes and did feel with their hands” (3 Nephi 11:15).  This was the whole group, including the children. But then, towards the end of that first day, He brought the children to Him again.  We read, “He commanded that their little children should be brought.”  After bringing them together He prayed, and then “he wept, and the multitude bare record of it, and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them” (3 Nephi 17:11, 21).  This means that each child was brought to Him individually twice in that same day; He spent time with everyone individually, but the children got a double portion.  Surely that teaches us something about the priority we should place on being with our children. 

               In a talk on children Elder Oaks said this: “Children are highly vulnerable. They have little or no power to protect or provide for themselves and little influence on so much that is vital to their well-being. Children need others to speak for them, and they need decision makers who put their well-being ahead of selfish adult interests.”  All too often the interests of children—who cannot vote, who cannot speak out in public forums, who cannot offer significant sums of money—are ignored.  This isn’t just a problem in society and governments in general, but in our personal lives as well.  It is all too easy to discount the value of time spent with children because, unlike so much else we spend time on, we may feel it provides no measurable, quantitative value to us.  And yet, if the Savior’s example teaches us anything, it is that time spent with children is of enormous value in the eyes of God.  We read of when His disciples tried to discount the opportunity of children to come unto Him: “And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:13).  Spending time with children is at the heart of what it means to be a part of the kingdom of God.    

            In the account in chapter 7 of the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the narrator (the “adult”) was busy trying to fix his airplane in the desert when the little prince (the child) was trying to speak to him and ask him questions about the rose on his planet.  They got in an argument when the narrator told him that matters concerning the rose weren’t important, and the little prince was overcome with worry and grief for his rose.  As the little prince was sobbing the narrator suddenly realized that his work to fix his airplane—and he would die in the desert if he didn’t—was not the most important thing for him at that moment.  He said, “The night had fallen. I had let my tools drop from my hands. I did not care about my hammer, my bolt, or thirst, or death. On one star, one planet, my planet, the Earth, there was a little prince to be comforted. I took him in my arms, and rocked him.”  All too often I find myself as that adult with “more important” matters to attend to than to truly pay attention to my children like they need.  But when on one planet, the earth, in my own house, there is a child to be comforted or loved or taught or simply held, what else really matters?