Lead me, guide me.

I was talking in my last post about Primary.  Today was one of my last weeks in Primary for who knows how long, as we're moving to Provo at the first of February, so we'll be going to a new ward and we'll be getting new callings.

This week during singing time, the children all shared their favorite songs, and we sang a few of them, one of them being "I am a Child of God".

Those of you who don't know the lyrics, they are as follows.

I am a child of God, and He has sent me here,
Has given me an earthly home, with parents kind and dear.
Lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way.
Teach me all that I must do to live with Him some day.

That's just the first verse, there's a few others. Well, we sang this song today, and my mind flashed back to a few months ago when the Primary children performed their musical program for the entire congregation. The theme of the program was "I am a Child of God", and children shared their testimonies at the pulpit.

At the end of the program, the children sang with the entire congregation "I am a Child of God". I started to get a little choked up looking across the audience at every person there, bearing their testimony of their divine nature.

Today, I thought about that again, particularly about the lines "Lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way. Teach me all that I must do to live with Him some day." The children belted that chorus with all of their hearts today and I got choked up again. I couldn't sing with them. I remember when their parents sang the song with them during the program and realized a deeper meaning to the lyrics. The parents were singing TO the children.

In the scriptures, Jesus says "Suffer the children to come to me, for such is the Kingdom of God." I thought today how refreshing it must have been for Christ to be surrounded by perfect spirits. The desire to serve and understanding of unconditional love is perhaps strongest among our children. The parents were asking their children to lead them, guide them, and teach them with their example that day.

Children can be mean. I've seen that quite often. But I've seen more often their sensitivity towards those who are upset, their complete lack of hesitation when another cries and they jump towards them with words of comfort and arms open. How much better can we be, as adults, if we stopped trying to cram knowledge of how to be and who to be down the throats of our children and observed how they naturally are, learning from how they are.

Happy Sunday, everyone.