“They Brought Their Little Children”

Does it ever bother you when you’re trying to concentrate on something and you’re being distracted by children? Perhaps it’s a church service or a concert where you are trying to focus on the person in front of the room, but children all around you are making noise. Or perhaps you’re at home, working on an important project, and a child demands your time and attention.

I don’t know how long it took for Jesus to share His wounds with the multitude at Bountiful, call twelve disciples, and teach them about baptism, gospel living, lost sheep, and the gathering of Israel, but when He looked around at the multitude, He could see they were exhausted. And that was the adults! It must have been a long day for the children who were present. Yet after healing their sick, Jesus invited the children to come forward.

So they brought their little children and set them down upon the ground round about him, and Jesus stood in the midst; and the multitude gave way till they had all been brought unto him.

3 Nephi 17:12

With the children front and center, Jesus offered a supernal prayer, wept, blessed the children, wept again, and then said, “Behold your little ones,” as angels descended from heaven and ministered to the children. (See 3 Nephi 17:13-25.)

Are children important to Jesus? During His mortal ministry, when people brought their children to Him to be blessed, the disciples tried to stop them, perhaps thinking they were preserving His time and energy for more important activities. Jesus responded by teaching the disciples about His priorities:

Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

Luke 18:16; see also Matthew 19:14

On September 25, 1956, an enormous congregation gathered at the newly completed Longfellow Park chapel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. David O. McKay, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was there to dedicate the building. As he stood to speak to the large group of people, he looked around the room. “Where are the children?” he asked. He was told that a nursery had been organized in a different part of the building, so that the children would not be a distraction from such an important event. “We don’t want that,” he replied, and he requested that the children be brought to sit with their families. Then, he addressed his remarks to the children, inviting the adults to listen along if they wanted to (Kristen Smith Dayley, For All the Saints, 168).

The children’s organization in the Church is called Primary. Sister Joy D. Jones explained, “To our Heavenly Father, children have never been secondary—they have always been ‘primary'” (“Essential Conversations,” General Conference, April 2021).

Today I will value children as the Savior does. Rather than see them as distractions, I will see them as valued sons and daughters of God, worthy of my attention, my respect, and my time.