Real planning for anything we want to achieve in life takes a combination of those three things at least:
A vision of what you want to accomplish,
a timeline for getting it done, and
the resources for doing it.
The same is true for the goal of raising children who will discover and pursue their ultimate potential in life – a potential that we know is not about whether they become artists or auto mechanics, farmers or fabricators, teachers or tailors, but is ultimately fulfilled by them being fully prepared for the eternal life that awaits them afterwards.
Now, that’s not a goal quite as simple as building a park in the middle of a city, but it does take those same three components: a timeline, resources, and a vision.
For young children, the Lord himself gives us the timeline. In Doctrine & Covenants section 68, verse 25, he says:
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All these steps and stages set a timeline for taking children from infancy to adulthood – which, as we get older, we come to know is virtually no time at all – with the objective of helping them learn about and begin to walk along the covenant path, hopefully establishing a foundation of personalities, perspectives, and priorities that will help direct them to pursue righteous goals throughout the remainder of their lives and into the eternities.
The resources for this plan are many. The Church provides an abundance of supportive materials for education and entertainment that are suited for each step along that timeline. It also provides the meeting places where we can gather as a community, experience the sacrament, and teach and support one another. It also provides the ordinances of salvation.
The Lord further provides to each of us and to each child the Light of Christ as a helpful guide; and parents and teachers in the Church also have access to the Gift of the Holy Ghost which provides spiritual gifts such as discernment, to help you truly get to know the individual natures and needs of the children for whom you have responsibility.
Your own experiences and understanding can also be resources for teaching and helping children to walk the covenant path; but where we come in personally is more precisely in the third component of a good plan: the vision.
Of course, we can, should, and do hold up Jesus Christ as the standard and exemplar for all of us in seeking to live lives of faith and righteousness. Every child and, indeed, every person, should be encouraged and directed to learn about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and to follow his example. But the truth is, that’s not typically enough.
There are a few reasons why, but mainly it’s because we don’t see him. What we see, or read about, are episodes in his life, moments that were miraculous or instructive. We don’t get to read in the New Testament or other books about his day-to-day existence; how he washed his hands or brushed his teeth; whether he ever got a cold, or sneezed or hiccupped at an inopportune time. We know precious little about his childhood, how he behaved in school, if he even went to school, or how he chose his friends. We don’t know even what clothes he wore, what entertainment he enjoyed, or what he looked like. Ultimately, we know nothing about what Elder Uchtdorf calls "the details of daily decisions," in his talk, "Jesus Christ is the Strength of Parents".
We are given or create images, impressions, and ideas that are often influenced as much by our own cultures, perceptions, education, and experience as by the little factual information we have about him.
So, Jesus, ultimately, becomes an exemplar of the ideal, of the ultimate achievement, but his story doesn’t tell us everything we might need to know about how to get through each and every day; that, we learn best from one another.
So, for most children the components of the plan for achieving their ultimate potential are these: The timeline that comes from God; the resources that come through His Church; and the vision, that comes from us.
For good or for bad, we create the vision that children will see, that exemplifies to them how the gospel is to be lived and the plan of happiness is to be fulfilled.
What an awesome duty this imposes on each of us to be good examples of living the covenant path. Because this doesn’t apply just to parents, teachers, or leaders in the Church. Every one of us sitting here today is an example to the children around us of what it means, what it looks like, and how it works to live the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Do they learn from us that repentance is happiness? That God is hope? That love conquers all?
Do they see us struggle joyfully through our challenges and infirmities because we know God is with us?
Do they witness our willingness to serve? Do we help them to see what the foundations of the celestial kingdom look like in the way that we love one another?
Just as a plan will not succeed if all we have is a vision, it is also true that even the timely application of great resources will not be enough to overcome a skewed perspective about what gospel living, the covenant path, and the plan of happiness are supposed to look like.
Can we each make a promise to ourselves, God, and one another, to do a better job of witnessing to children what gospel living ought to look like? In fact, we have each already made that promise, haven’t we? It’s in the baptismal covenant, as described by Alma:
I invite us each to consider more deeply what a covenant is, and to consider what the covenant is that we make with our Heavenly Father through the atonement of Jesus Christ, and how it should transform our lives as we abide by and in that covenant.
As a lawyer, I am well aware of the common use of the word “covenant” to name things we agree to in contracts; but to think of our covenants with God in that sense alone is, in my view, to demean them and to significantly miss the mark. President Nelson said,
When you and I … enter [the covenant\ path, we have a new way of life. We … create a relationship with God that allows Him to bless and change us. …. All covenants …create a relationship with everlasting ties. …Once you … have made a covenant with God, [your]relationship with Him becomes much closer than before … [You\ are bound together. Because of [your\ covenant with God, He will never tire in His efforts to help [you\, and [you\ will never exhaust His merciful patience.. |
This is one reason why our most sacred covenants with God are signified by a new name. When Abram covenanted with God, God changed his name to signify their new relationship. Abram became Abraham, and Sarai became Sarah. The difference in each case was the addition of a portion of God’s own name to theirs – the name of Jehovah, who we know is Jesus Christ – so that they would always be identified with, and forever bound to, Him.
When you and I were baptized, we also covenanted to take upon us the name of Christ. In the book of Isaiah, we are told that when we make Christ’s soul an offering for sin, we become His children. When we join the Church, with faith in Jesus Christ and the atonement He wrought for us, the covenant we make causes us to belong to Jesus Christ, as children to a spiritual father. We are His and He promises to always be with us.
We affirm this relationship each week when we partake of the sacrament and refer again to our covenant to “take upon [us] the name of [Jesus Christ], and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given [us]; that [we] may always have his Spirit to be with [us].” This covenant is deepened when we participate in the ordinances and covenants of the temple.
The covenant relationship we have with God is beautiful and extraordinary, and ought to influence everything in our lives.
It ought to make us more loving, more peaceful, happier, and more purposeful. Our lack of those feelings is not a sin, but it is a shortcoming, and we can strive to do better, by striving to be closer to him. We can, as Mormon advised, have faith, repent, and pray to God “with all the energy of heart” to be filled with his love, to be made more perfect and joyful through Him.
As we do these things, sincerely pursuing the covenant path that God has graciously set before us, I offer my testimony, my belief, that our children and others will more clearly see, be encouraged and helped by, our efforts, to be better able to choose for themselves to take the covenant path and fulfill their eternal destiny. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.