The Most Important Work

In the book of Psalms we have these words in admiration for the way that God cares for His children on earth: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?  For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour” (Psalms 8:3-5).  I love that language—when we see the vastness of the creations of God, we should be in awe that even with all of that God still cares for each one of us.  He is intimately involved in the details of our lives even though His work is so much more vast than our little lives.  Despite all of the greatness of his creations, His “work and glory” is centered on the eternal welfare of His children.  The most important thing for Him has always been His mortal creations.   

                I think that this serves as an example to parents who are seeking to bring up their children in truth and righteousness.  Especially when one has little children, it is easy to get carried away in the “importance” of your own life and place it, whether consciously or not, above that of the lives of one’s children.  With the stress of work and finances and just day-to-day living for an adult, it’s all too easy to assume that the things happening in the lives of the little ones of the family is of little consequence.  But if the Father holds more value in the lives of His children than in all of His other works, then I think that tells us that we should do the same. It reminds me of the account in chapter 7 of the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  The narrator recounted his dialogue with the Little Prince this way: “At that moment I was very busy trying to unscrew a bolt that had got stuck in my engine. I was very much worried, for it was becoming clear to me that the breakdown of my plane was extremely serious.”  The Little Prince, speaking of his most precious possession, a rose, then asked, “The thorns-- what use are they?”  The narrator, preoccupied with his important work of fixing his plane, answered without thinking saying that the thorns were of no use at all, but the Little Prince wasn’t fooled.  The Little Prince pushed him on his answer and the narrator said, “At that instant I was saying to myself: ‘If this bolt still won't turn, I am going to knock it out with the hammer.’ Again the little prince disturbed my thoughts.”  The Little Prince could not understand how the man did not see the great importance of his question: “The flowers have been growing thorns for millions of years. For millions of years the sheep have been eating them just the same. And is it not a matter of consequence to try to understand why the flowers go to so much trouble to grow thorns which are never of any use to them? Is the warfare between the sheep and the flowers not important?... And if I know-- I, myself-- one flower which is unique in the world, which grows nowhere but on my planet, but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning, without even noticing what he is doing-- Oh! You think that is not important!"  (see here)  All too often we see our problems like the narrator saw his difficulty in fixing the airplane, and we fail to open our hearts to understand what’s really important to our children.  As the Savior said to the Nephites when He was among them, “Behold your little ones” (3 Nephi 17:23).  We have to learn to see them as the Lord sees them and see our own “serious” problems as the Lord sees them as well.