I Read the Scriptures...

Today was the annual Primary program in our ward. Over the last year, the children have been learning songs and focusing on the Primary theme for the year, and it all culminates with this Sacrament Meeting program. It's been difficult in our ward, because the overlap between wards in our building has meant that the children have had to do most of their rehearsing in the Primary room, instead of in the chapel, but they did have a rehearsal yesterday morning.

Anyway, that's not what I really want to talk about. What I want to talk about is our boys' roles in the program. They each had a line. Joseph took the cake though. He came up with his line by himself, "I read the scriptures with my family." Now, I wish this were true. We have instituted family scripture study in the past, but it is very difficult with three squirrelly little boys. Evidently, our past efforts left an impression on Joseph, or he is trying to tell us something.

What was great, though, was how he said it. Unlike all of the other children, who - it seemed - got up to the microphone and in their diminutive, meek little voices read their lines, Joseph stood at that microphone, double-checked with his teacher that he had the line, and then thrusting his mouth at the microphone to - practically - engulf it, said loudly and boldly:

I READ THE SCRIPTURES!!! WITH MY FAMILYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

It was great! It's what everyone hopes for in a Primary program. I mean sure, the sweetly singing little voices are angelic and wonderful, but we all know that lurking between that cherubic exterior are wild little creatures, and we trust them to show forth their wonderful light, so vital and full of energy. It warms my heart when I see children being...well...being children. They have a lifetime of reverence and duty ahead of them, so it's wonderful sometimes to see them just being kids.

Anyway, it was a wonderful program; I could feel the Spirit throughout, burning like a pilot light in my heart. Children are such a wonderful blessing (I write this as Joseph says, like a 20's-era gangster, "you think that's funny," while standing at the foot of the stairs, naked from the waist down, holding his shorts in one hand). I love their frankness, and straightforwardness. They bring such joy. I only hope that someday I can be so brutally honest and pure.