A Special Guest Post

Today I am happy to say that Marshall is contributing his wisdom on the blog!

Tonight Max taught me a very valuable lesson on "teaching the principles of the gospel at the appropriate time and place."  Every night, Max loves to sit and watch the Mormon Message of I Am A Child of God on my iPad. He loves both the singing and the people in the video.  In just the last year we have probably watched that video over 150 times, and by now I am sure that Max knows that he is a child of God.  But tonight, after we watched that video, I clicked on two other videos just for fun. The first video he also thought was pretty cool, but toward the end I could tell he was getting pretty tired. The second video, however, was what I thought a powerful video by President Monson on the promises of the resurrection and the hope of being reunited with our loved ones in the next life.  By the end of the video, Lisa and I were both emotionally touched and almost in tears.  Max, on the other hand, was not feeling what we were feeling.  This poor little boy had gotten increasingly tired and restless throughout the video and started to squirm and shift around in Lisa's lap by the end of it.  As the movie got over, I looked over at him, and with a disgusted look on his face, Max took out his cherished binkie, looked at the iPad, and threw his binkie toward the closing picture of the movie.  Lisa and I couldn't help but smile. Was Max really showing us that he didn't believe and would never eventually believe in the principles that the movie had taught? No, not at all.  He was simply trying to tell us that this was not the time to teach him this principle of the gospel, that he was tired, and that he was ready for the evening to be over.  I wouldn't have thought much about this, but the Spirit has whispered to me tonight of the greatness of this lesson by this little boy--that the principles of the gospel are taught the best in the appropriate time, place and setting.  I'm very positive that someday there will be a time and place where Max will come to love the principles of the resurrection and eternal life, but that time was just not tonight. As it states in the scriptures, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven...a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted...a time to rend and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and time to speak" (Ecclesiastes 3: 1,2,7).

- Marshall