Out of the mouth of babes

Parker, Evan, and I did a little craft project the past few days to get ready for Stake Conference today... two hours is a looong time for little ones with no promise of nursery for incentive (one month from tomorrow for Evan, although we're planning on taking him and staying the next few weeks so that he'll have a good transition) We took some old Ensigns and cut out pictures of the Savior, temples, and other gospel related images. Parker selected the pictures, I cut, and Evan mostly just played with the scraps. I took the pictures and glued collages onto card stock, and then cut them to fit in a nifty little cardboard booklet that would hold the pages secure, and latch. Parker couldn't wait for church to play with it! He was looking at the pictures again, and was looking at the page that has a picture of the Savior, open scriptures, and then olive branches. We'd been reading in Jacob 5 about the allegory of the olive tree--basically discussing the falling away and then redemption of Israel--and it talks a lot about the fruit, and "casting the wild (or yucky, as we simplified it) fruit into the fire. I was talking with Parker about some of the pictures, and mentioned the fruit, and he started retelling me the story. He told me how the yucky fruit got thrown in the fire, and then he said it was done to make it clean. I was struck by how profound that comment was. I usually think of the story as sorting the righteous and wicked, blah blah, but I liked the insight. None of us are perfect, and life can be pretty difficult! We all have our fires of tribulation, and it's nice to remember that those fires can make us clean as well.