My youngest daughters finished elementary school this week. Their older sister finished junior high school. And their older brother is now getting ready for his final year of high school.
This was our final year of having our children in each of the three levels of precollege public schools.
My dad used to play a song that referenced the scripture in Ecclesiastes 3:1, which reads, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
I would tell him the song’s season had passed a long time ago. He didn’t think I was funny.
As a young man, my seasons were pretty well defined. There was football season, basketball season, soccer season and summer.
Now that I have children of my own, I find that seasons are more fluid than I once imagined. While some seasons are experienced by large groups of individuals together — like the seasons of weather or sporting fandom — other seasons are personal. Those may include seasons of joy, sorrow, learning, repenting or preparing to make new covenants.
And other seasons fall on top of each other. As a dad, I find that my four children are in different seasons of their academic, social, physical and spiritual education. I can observe them navigate the seasons they are in, and I can offer empathy, suggestions and reflections on my own experiences from living through similar seasons. But the seasons are theirs.
My wife recently suggested that we sit around the table for a different kind of “Come, Follow Me” study experience. Instead of reading the scriptures out loud together, she suggested a study activity that we would do simultaneously but as individuals. She explained the assignment and gave us an amount of time in which to study and to write some of our feelings and observations.
One of our children expressed frustration when other family members began to read what they had written because their experiences didn’t match hers. But this wasn’t a right-or-wrong kind of exercise. It was not a true-or-false test. It was meant to be an exercise in recognizing feelings and perhaps learning something new.
What I wrote was not the same as what my wife wrote. None of us wrote or felt the exact same thing as another.
None of us was wrong. We are in different seasons. I needed to feel what I felt that Sunday afternoon sitting around the table and studying with my family. And I was likewise blessed to hear what others in the family learned. As a father, I was grateful that everyone got something different out of that time in the scriptures. I’m grateful my wife suggested the changeup to our routine.
In Mosiah 5:7, King Benjamin teaches his people about righteous covenants.
“Because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.”
This verse has come to have new meaning for me as a parent compared to when I was a teenager or a missionary or a single college student. It still taught me things in each of those seasons of my life. I’m grateful for the additional meaning it has for me now on top of what I learned in those other seasons. I feel blessed that the Savior loves me as His son through the covenants I have made.
Ecclesiastes 3 and Mosiah 5 teach a principle about working through our seasons. In the Old Testament chapter, we read in the ninth verse, “What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?” And Mosiah 5:13 reads, “For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served?”
The seasons of study and work and service all have their rewards. Those rewards come from a loving Heavenly Father who is helping each of us to gradually become more like Him and to learn about His ways. Today I feel great gratitude for the converging and overlapping of those seasons and the way they come together for our good.
— Jon Ryan Jensen is editor of the Church News.
