The Devil's Handywork . . . It's Everywhere!

The month of January is always a fun month in junior primary.  Children who turned three in the prior year are now able to come be a part of the primary program.  A handful of three year olds get the "privilege" of  leaving behind the nursery room; where they were previously allowed to play with toys and eat snacks while their parents enjoyed spiritual meetings away from their children.  Now, they join the "big kids" where they are asked to sit still, sing songs, and share in group lessons.  The first couple months of the year usually involves a lot of tears, a lot of wiggly bodies, and a handful of extra grown-ups in tiny child sized chairs that barely sit a foot off the ground.  It is a rather humorous sight.

Sharing time, is the time of primary where we usually gather on the floor to listen to a group lesson.  The chapel I attend is very simple.  Nothing ornate or overly decorative.  The walls are white painted bricks and have various religious posters on the wall, in both English and Spanish.  There are two short walls at the front and back of the room; both have a chalk board for presenting lesson "helps."  There are then two long walls, one with a handful of doors and the other with seven or eight windows.  The windows are not stained glass, but they are not a clear glass.  They are more the glass found on bathroom windows; the ones you can's see out of, but sunlight is let in.

I don't know who decorates our chapels, but in every Mormom meeting house I've been, these windows exist and are always covered in white floor to ceiling curtains. These curtains have a magical power that calls to nearly all little boys.  "Come play amongst me!  Come swing within me!" Very few little boys can resist the temptations, especially those who have just arrived from the nursery.  When hotwheels and miniature kitchens are no longer present, the lure of these curtains is enchanting. 

Last Sunday as I sat and watched, one sweet little boy couldn't resist the temptations.  I laughed as this young Charlie Brown/Caloiu (from PBS) paraded through the curtains.  He'd freeze, with just his little cowboy boots visible from the bottom, and then suddenly move about, arms outstretched so that the long curtains made exaggerated moves.  We grown-ups, in all our "wisdom" attempted to just ignore him.  However, the trance of the curtains drew in another three year old boy.  Soon there were two under the curtains and two older children trying to lure them out.  Every eye in the primary on the curtains.  If we had gathered to today to learn of our Savior, it was not going to happen in that room.  Not with those curtains.

I laughed and leaned to the woman next to me and said, "the devil's handywork is everywhere!"