Sunday Thoughts

Sundays, in the church that I belong to, I spend my time in the nursery with the 18-month to 3-year-olds. This is after our regular meeting where we all congregate together and have talks and take the Sacrament, etc. Some Sundays just seem like a battle. In the LDS church, we have callings and are asked to serve in various capacities and this changes periodically. Through this, I have learned so much. I have worked with children, young adults, teens, adults, etc.

I love church. Going gives me peace and strength and a knowledge that there is something greater at the helm of my life than myself and that there is something bigger that I can count on always and forever.

Since I have three children, Sacrament meeting can be interesting to say the least. The younger two really do not understand the need for sitting for an hour and listening to people talk and give prayers especially when the sun is out and there are toys at home. They were not listening and being extra challenging today. Not in the best of moods, if you get drift.

I was noticing the same problems with the nursery age kids as we were trying to get them to listen to the short lesson that we have for them on Sundays. Today was about the creation. Me and the other people in the nursery were trying to get the children to sit still on their carpet squares, to stop running around, to stop doing other things and listen a bit. It was quite chaotic. In my mind, this seemed like a fruitless attempt to teach them something spiritual. During Sacrament meeting, I spent more time trying to get my four-year-old to sit still than I really got out of the meeting and nursery was no better.

As I was thinking about all this in the nursery, I remembered a conversation my husband had a year or two ago in another nursery in another ward with a man that was working in there. They were having the same problem at the time and this man said, "Is teaching them a lesson really worth it?" He also said to my husband that it just doesn't seem like they are really getting anything out of it.

My husband then asked him this question, "When did you first realize that Jesus loved you?" This man's reply was, "Well, I have always known that." My husband said, "Whether we think they are getting anything out of it or not, they really are." The children really are learning. They are learning things that they will carry with them forever through good and bad times. That man had learned in his youth a valuable lesson because of diligent teachers and parents. Whether we think are children are listening or not, they really are. It is worth the effort, the struggles, and the challenges to teach them about good things.

Children are such a blessing. I am glad that I can give them a gift like this and that when things are hard they will always remember that Jesus loves them and God loves them. The hard things in life are so worth the effort. It is a privledge to teach little children about the good things in life and how to strive to be a good person and to give them skills to cope with an ever changing world.