Focus on the Purpose - Values and Choices

This morning, my mom and I were talking about my lesson and how I wasn't entirely sure how I wanted to teach it. She advised me to consider the lesson's purpose. Each lesson in the Primary manual has a stated purpose, and those purposes are never about learning the history of events and rarely include finding role-models among the characters, two things which I had thought were rather important. Instead, the purpose of this lesson is "To help the children recognize how our values influence our choices." Looking at the story again through this lens, it started to seem a lot easier to teach.

Jacob valued his brother's birthright more than he valued his brother's well-being, so he only offered his brother some food on the condition of exchange, and Esau valued that food more than he valued his birthright, so he made the deal. Later, Jacob valued the birthright more than his integrity, so he used trickery to get his father's blessing. By that time, Esau came to value the birthright more than he valued his brother's life, so he made plans to kill him.

And here, I might add the story of Jacob working for Laban so he could marry Rachel, because that shows how much Jacob valued Rachel, but I probably won't go into detail on this point because it's the primary focus of next week's lesson.

Then, finally, when Jacob and Esau were reunited, Jacob valued his Esau's forgiveness (and his own life) more than he valued his livestock, so he offered Esau lots of animals, but Esau had also had a change of heart, and he now valued his brother more than the livestock, so he let Jacob keep it.

I'll tell the children that, at each major point in the story, each of the characters are driven, to one degree or another, by their desires. I'll probably also share a relevant quote from President Uchtdorf:

For what we love determines what we seek.

What we seek determines what we think and do.

What we think and do determines who we are—and who we will become.

I'll conclude by encouraging the children to value and seek the things that have eternal value, like strong, wholesome, family relationships. My hope is that, as the children learn what Jacob and Esau valued and what they did because of their values, those children will begin to think about what they value and what they ought to do. I'm glad that my mom reminded me to think about the purpose of this lesson. It really helped me figure out how to focus this lesson and pull some valuable moral lessons from it, which I can now share with the children.