If ye do what I say, ye shall get Dollar Tree

Hey. This is Ryan. Let's be honest. Church for parents with young children can be, to the say the least, a less-than-spiritual experience. We're busy trying to "teach" the children to be reverent when, in fact, we're probably more disruptive by hissing directives throughout the entire hour-long service. Case in point, Luke likes to be selective with the bread in the sacrament tray. That means he touches every piece of bread until he finds the biggest one. This led me to quietly whisper, "Luke! They are all Jesus' body, so just pick one and eat it!"

That did not compute in his four-year-old brain. "Jesus' body? Gross!" he must have thought because he promptly stuck his tongue out complete with chewed bread and plopped the remains on the pew. That did not fly with me as I had personally vaccumed the chapel, pews and all, the day before. It put me in a pretty foul mood.

But, despite the mood, something happened that Sunday that hadn't happened for almost nine years - I felt the Spirit at church. And it happened in Young Men's class, no less. I am blessed to be a part of a young men's organization with awesome boys and even better leaders. My presidency consists of great men who know the meaning of service. To put it plainly, we care about the boys' spiritual, mental and physical growth. Here's the epiphany, though. As the Young Men's secretary gave his lesson, I glanced around at the boys. They were participating, listening and actually learning stuff about the Gospel. What he was teaching was this - that if God is our Father in Heaven, then it's not far off to imagine that he would want the same things that our fathers here on Earth would want from us: obedience.

I thought about my role as a father. What makes me the happiest with my kids? When they do something without me asking. What prompted that thought was that Ally and Luke had done something completely out of character earlier that week: they had performed some small task without being asked to do it. Luke had taken out all the trashes and Ally had straightened up her room without being prompted by Lish or me. It had made us feel so good about our children. We wanted to reward them somehow. I personally wanted to shower them with candy and dimes (a hot commodity at our house). Instead we went to Dollar Tree where they got to pick out one item.

That's where the epiphany and parallel to our Heavenly Father came from. Do you think if we do something good in life without thoughts of being rewarded that He is as happy as I was? I like to think He is. I hope I do good things without thinking, "Man, You better be watching and taking notes!" It kind of defeats the purpose.

So, that was my epiphany. I shared it with the boys in class and they all seemed to agree. At least, I think the blank stares and strained head bobs meant they agreed. Or they were just tolerating my ramblings. Anyway, what's your take on my epiphany? Had an epiphany of your own whilst at church despite fighting a dirty hand picking for the biggest pieces of sacrament? Comment away, friends!