This week, I'm going to teach my Primary class about one of the times Joseph Smith was imprisoned. This lesson will cover Joseph Smith rebuking foul-mouthed guards and his later imprisonment in Liberty Jail (but it won't include Carthage, which I'm sure we'll address later). The purpose of the lesson is "To help the children understand that if they have faith in the Lord, he will help us meet any adversity we face." To this end, the revelation given to Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail might be useful. But the trouble is that God has a very different perspective about affliction than we do.
I've heard it said that people evaluate whether or not a period of time is "long" based on what percentage of their own life that period of time represents. For example, five years might feel like an eternity to a fifteen-year-old, but it'll sound significantly less long to someone who is fifty. God is a lot older than fifty. With His eternal perspective, all of mortality seems like a short period of time. On the opposite end of the spectrum, young kids consider relatively short periods of time much longer by comparison. In my opinion, "a small moment" is only a few seconds long, maybe up to half a minute, but in God's perspective, "a small moment" could last for four months.
Trying to explain God's eternal perspective to Primary kids might be difficult, but it may be worth the effort. If I can teach them that they, too, can have an eternal perspective, I might be able to teach them that even a whole lifetime isn't actually all that long. Patience is difficult for Primary-age kids, but a lesson like this may help them develop it. At the very least, I know I'll have to cover the purpose(s) of affliction and God's ever-present help and comfort to help us overcome and endure them, but I think it would be nice if I could also teach my kids how short-lived those afflictions truly are when we put them into perspective.
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