Out of the mouth of babes

"Behold, it came to pass on the morrow that the multitude gathered themselves together, and they both saw and heard these children; yea, even babes did open their mouths and utter marvelous things; and the things which they did utter were forbidden that there should not any man write them." 3 Nephi 26:16

Isn't it curious how the little ones can sometimes be the spiritual leaders in a home?

Sometimes they don't pick up on what's going on. Sometimes the situation is too complicated for them to comprehend. And sometimes they pick up on what God's trying to say so much faster than anyone else.

Perhaps it's unusual for someone with this kind of message to admit that children are not a uniform crowd of Yodas but, quite often, don't come running with pearls of wisdom spilling out their mouths. There is much about children that should never, under any circumstances, be emulated. Sometimes they are the most charitable of God's children, but there are other times that they can be vicious monsters that ruthlessly seize upon anything that makes another child different from the pack.

When Jesus tells us to become as little children, we wants us to be childlike rather than childish. There are some things of childhood that must be discarded. He wants us to take all the good that we can find in the nature of children, discard the rest, and to this goodness add the wisdom of serpents and the learning of priests.

We grow beyond childhood for a reason. To innocence let us add experience. To the stillness that oft lets children hear the words of God where only silence greets their parents, let us add the wisdom that allows us to act correctly on what we have heard.