Stepping aside

One of the underrated lessons from King Benjamin is knowing when to step aside. He could have served as long until he died, like most monarchs seem to do, and the people would have supported that. (We saw that from Queen Elizabeth this last year.) Honestly that makes sense in situations where the monarch is a figurehead with a government being operated day to day by others like the British monarchy now is. But King Benjamin recognized his own mortality and knew that regardless of the patience of his people he was less able to fulfill the role of leading the people in all the ways he might need to. He also recognized the opposite of “I alone can do it.” In other words, he acknowledged that there was someone else capable of leading the people in righteousness as he would wish so he turned his authority over to the next generation.

I wish we had more of that in our day (and not the Utah GOP way of stepping down in the middle of the term so the party committee can appoint a replacement who will run as an incumbent in the next cycle).