A human being is a deciding being.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.
Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
What is to give light must endure burning.
When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
maxwell maltz
Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.
Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.
For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.
Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.
Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.
Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.
Realizing that our actions, feelings and behaviour are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.
Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow - after you have done your best to achieve success today.
Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.
Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent.
Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person's feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel.
The "self-image" is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.
To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.
We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.
We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
You can always find the sun within yourself if you will only search.
You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you.
You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.
Your most important sale in life is to sell yourself to yourself.
Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.
For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.
Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.
Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.
Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.
Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.
Realizing that our actions, feelings and behaviour are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.
Remember you will not always win. Some days, the most resourceful individual will taste defeat. But there is, in this case, always tomorrow - after you have done your best to achieve success today.
Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment.
Self-improvement is the name of the game, and your primary objective is to strengthen yourself, not to destroy an opponent.
Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person's feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel.
The "self-image" is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.
To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.
We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.
We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.
You can always find the sun within yourself if you will only search.
You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you.
You may live in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not all shut.
Your most important sale in life is to sell yourself to yourself.
Friday, August 27, 2010
napoleon hill
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
Action is the real measure of intelligence.
All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.
All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.
Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.
Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.
Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.
Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
Don't wait. The time will never be just right.
Edison failed 10, 000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.
Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win - essential to success.
Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.
Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.
First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it.
Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.
If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge.
It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.
It is always your next move.
It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.
Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.
Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.
Money without brains is always dangerous.
More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.
Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies say about him.
No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.
No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.
No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.
One must marry one's feelings to one's beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one's life.
Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.
Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.
Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.
Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.
Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.
The battle is all over except the "shouting" when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.
The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.
The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.
The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.
The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.
The starting point of all achievement is desire.
The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.
The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.
There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.
There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
Think and grow rich.
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.
Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.
We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.
When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.
Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.
You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.
You give before you get.
You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.
Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.
Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
Action is the real measure of intelligence.
All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.
All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.
Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.
Before success comes in any man's life, he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.
Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.
Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
Don't wait. The time will never be just right.
Edison failed 10, 000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.
Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win - essential to success.
Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.
Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.
First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it.
Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.
If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge.
It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.
It is always your next move.
It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.
Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.
Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.
Money without brains is always dangerous.
More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.
Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies say about him.
No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.
No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.
No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.
One must marry one's feelings to one's beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one's life.
Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.
Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.
Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.
Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.
Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.
The battle is all over except the "shouting" when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.
The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.
The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.
The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.
The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.
The starting point of all achievement is desire.
The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.
The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.
There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.
There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
Think and grow rich.
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.
Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.
We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.
When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.
Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.
You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.
You give before you get.
You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.
Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.
Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
anais nin
Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.
Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.
Dreams are necessary to life.
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.
Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Good things happen to those who hustle.
How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.
I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.
I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.
I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.
If all of us acted in unison as I act individually there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way.
If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all.
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.
Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.
People living deeply have no fear of death.
The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.
What I cannot love, I overlook. Is that real friendship?
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.
Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.
Dreams are necessary to life.
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.
Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Good things happen to those who hustle.
How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.
I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.
I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.
I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.
If all of us acted in unison as I act individually there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way.
If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all.
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.
Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.
People living deeply have no fear of death.
The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.
What I cannot love, I overlook. Is that real friendship?
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
paul coelho
Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.
Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions.
We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.
You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.
Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions.
We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.
You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
antoine de saint-exupery
A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.
I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.
I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.
Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.
Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.
The one thing that matters is the effort.
The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.
To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.
I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.
I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.
Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart.
Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.
The one thing that matters is the effort.
The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.
To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible.
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
love & marriage
“The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Ask the child why it is born; ask the flower why it blossoms; ask the sun why it shines. I love you because I must love you.”
~ George P. Upton
“Marriage is ever made by destiny.”
~ George Chapman
“Two human loves make one divine.” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“A happy marriage is a new beginning of life, a new starting point for happiness and usefulness.” ~ Dean Stanley
“There is nothing half so sweet in life
As love's young dream.”
~ Thomas Moore
“Grace and remembrance be to you both.”
~ William Shakespeare
“One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.”
~ Honore de Balzac
“Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” ~ Emily Bronte
“Happy and thrice happy are those who enjoy an uninterrupted union, and whose love, unbroken by any sour complaints, shall not dissolve until the last day of their existence.
” ~ Horace
“He is the half part of a blessed man
Left to be finished by such as she:
And she a fair divided excellence
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
”
~ William Shakespeare
“Heaven give you many, many merry days.”
~ William Shakespeare
“For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
"After all, what was more important, in the end, than love?"
“You are my life. You're the only thing it would hurt to lose.” ~ Stephanie Meyer
“I promise to love you forever - every single day of forever.” ~ Stephanie Meyer
“If I could dream at all it would be about you. And I'm not ashamed of it.” ~ Stephanie Meyer
“A heart that loves is always young. ” ~ Greek Proverb
“I love you, not for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.” ~ Roy Croft
“As we grow older together, As we continue to change with age, There is one thing that will never change. . . I will always keep falling in love with you.” ~ Karen Klodfelder
“Give her two red roses, each with a note. The first note says For the woman I love and the second, For my best friend.” ~ Unknown
“This day I will marry my friend, the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.” ~ Anonymous
“If rain drops were kisses,I could send you showers. if hugs were seas i send you oceans. and if love was a person i send you me!!” ~ ally qwerty
“To the world you are one person, but to one person you are the world.” ~ unknown
“If I know what love is, it is because of you.” ~ Herman Hesse
“Grow old along with me the best is yet to be.” ~ Robert Browning
“Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.“ ~ Mark Overby
“Love is a gift from God, and as we obey His laws and genuinely learn to serve others, we develop God's love in our lives. Love of God is the means of unlocking divine powers which help us to live worthily and to overcome the world.” ~ David B. Haight
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.” ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
“You know you're in love when reality is finally better than your dreams.” ~ Unknown
“The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart.” ~ Josiah G. Holland
“Patience with others is Love, Patience with self is Hope, Patience with God is Faith.” ~ Adel Bestavros
“Boys are like stars, there are millions of them out there, bbut only one can make your dreams come true.” ~ Courtney Conner
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” ~ Robert Heinlein
“A heart that loves is always young. ” ~ Greek Proverb
“As we grow older together, As we continue to change with age, There is one thing that will never change. . . I will always keep falling in love with you.” ~ Karen Klodfelder
“The best thing about me is you.” ~ Shannon Crown
“Give her two red roses, each with a note. The first note says For the woman I love and the second, For my best friend.” ~ Unknown
Saturday, August 21, 2010
the living christ
THE LIVING CHRIST
THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES
THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS
As we commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ two millennia ago, we offer our testimony of the reality of His matchless life and the infinite virtue of His great atoning sacrifice. None other has had so profound an influence upon all who have lived and will yet live upon the earth. He was the Great Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Messiah of the New. Under the direction of His Father, He was the creator of the earth. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3). Though sinless, He was baptized to fulfill all righteousness. He "went about doing good" (Acts 10:38), yet was despised for it. His gospel was a message of peace and goodwill. He entreated all to follow His example. He walked the roads of Palestine, healing the sick, causing the blind to see, and raising the dead. He taught the truths of eternity, the reality of our premortal existence, the purpose of our life on earth, and the potential for the sons and daughters of God in the life to come. He instituted the sacrament as a reminder of His great atoning sacrifice. He was arrested and condemned on spurious charges, convicted to satisfy a mob, and sentenced to die on Calvary's cross. He gave His life to atone for the sins of all mankind. His was a great vicarious gift in behalf of all who would ever live upon the earth. We solemnly testify that His life, which is central to all human history, neither began in Bethlehem nor concluded on Calvary. He was the Firstborn of the Father, the Only Begotten Son in the flesh, the Redeemer of the world. He rose from the grave to "become the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). As Risen Lord, He visited among those He had loved in life. He also ministered among His "other sheep" (John 10:16) in ancient America. In the modern world, He and His Father appeared to the boy Joseph Smith, ushering in the long-promised "dispensation of the fulness of times" (Ephesians 1:10). Of the Living Christ, the Prophet Joseph wrote: "His eyes were as a flame of fire; the hair of his head was white like the pure snow; his countenance shone above the brightness of the sun; and his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters, even the voice of Jehovah, saying: "I am the first and the last; I am he who liveth, I am he who was slain; I am your advocate with the Father" (D&C 110:3–4). Of Him the Prophet also declared: "And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives! "For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father— "That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God" (D&C 76:22–24). We declare in words of solemnity that His priesthood and His Church have been restored upon the earth—"built upon the foundation of . . . apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone" (Ephesians 2:20). We testify that He will someday return to earth. "And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together" (Isaiah 40:5). He will rule as King of Kings and reign as Lord of Lords, and every knee shall bend and every tongue shall speak in worship before Him. Each of us will stand to be judged of Him according to our works and the desires of our hearts. We bear testimony, as His duly ordained Apostles—that Jesus is the Living Christ, the immortal Son of God. He is the great King Immanuel, who stands today on the right hand of His Father. He is the light, the life, and the hope of the world. His way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come. God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son.
|
January 1, 2000
of souls, symbols, and sacraments
Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments
by Jeffrey R. Holland
Jeffrey R. Holland was president of Brigham Young University when this devotional address was delivered on 12 January 1988 in the Marriott Center.
©1989 by Brigham Young University. All rights reserved.
For further information write Speeches, 218 University Press Building, Provo, Utah 84602.
(801) 378-4711
E-mail:speeches@byu.edu
This responsibility to speak to you never gets any easier for me. I think it gets more difficult as the years go by. I grow a little older, the world and its litany of problems get a little more complex, and your hopes and dreams become evermore important to me the longer I am at BYU. Indeed, your growth and happiness and development in the life you are now living and in the life you will be living in the days and decades ahead are the central and most compelling motivation in my daily professional life. I care very much about you now and forever. Everything I know to do at BYU is being done with an eye toward who and what you are, and who and what you can become. The future of this world's history will be quite fully in your hands very soon--at least your portion of it will be--and an education at an institution sponsored and guided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the greatest academic advantage I can imagine in preparation for such a serious and significant responsibility.
But that future, at least any qualitative aspect of it, must be vigorously fought for. It won't "just happen" to your advantage. Someone said once that the future is waiting to be seized, and if we do not grasp it firmly, then other hands, more determined and bloody than our own, will wrench it from us and follow a different course.
It is with an eye to that future--your future--and an awareness of this immense sense of responsibility I feel for you, that I approach this annual midyear devotional message. I always need the help and sustaining Spirit of the Lord to succeed at such times, but I especially feel the need for that spiritual help today.
Human Intimacy
My topic is that of human intimacy, a topic as sacred as any I know and more sacred than anything I have ever addressed from this podium. If I am not careful and you are not supportive, this subject can slide quickly from the sacred into the merely sensational, and I would be devastated if that happened. It would be better not to address the topic at all than to damage it with casualness or carelessness. Indeed, it is against such casualness and carelessness that I wish to speak. So I ask for your faith and your prayers and your respect.
You may feel this is a topic you hear addressed too frequently at this time in your life, but given the world in which we live, you may not be hearing it enough. All of the prophets, past and present, have spoken on it, and President Benson himself addressed this very subject in his annual message to this student body last fall.
I am thrilled that most of you are doing wonderfully well in the matter of personal purity. There isn't as worthy and faithful a group of university students anywhere else on the face of the earth. You are an inspiration to me. I acknowledge your devotion to the gospel and applaud it. Like Jacob of old, I would prefer for the sake of the innocent not to need to discuss such topics. But a few of you are not doing so well, and much of the world around us is not doing well at all.
The national press recently noted,
In America 3,000 adolescents become pregnant each day. A million a year. Four out of five are unmarried. More than half get abortions. "Babies having babies."[Babies] killing [babies]. ["What's Gone Wrong with Teen Sex," People,13 April 1987, p. 111]
That same national poll indicated nearly 60 percent of high school students in "mainstream" America had lost their virginity, and 80 percent of college students had. The Wall Street Journal (hardly in a class with the National Enquirer) recently wrote,
AIDS [appears to be reaching] plague[like] proportions. Even now it is claiming innocent victims: newborn babies and recipients of blood transfusions. It is only a matter of time before it becomes widespread among heterosexuals. . . .
AIDS should remind us that ours is a hostile world. . . . The more we pass ourselves around, the larger the likelihood of our picking something up. . . .
Whether on clinical or moral grounds, it seems clear that promiscuity has its price. [Wall Street Journal, 21 May 1987, p. 28]
Of course, more widespread in our society than the indulgence of personal sexual activity are the printed and photographed descriptions of those who do. Of that lustful environment a contemporary observer says,
We live in an age in which voyeurism is no longer the side line of the solitary deviate, but rather a national pastime, fully institutionalized and [circularized] in the mass media. [William F. May, quoted by Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), p. 178]
In fact, the rise of civilization seems, ironically enough, to have made actual or fantasized promiscuity a greater, not a lesser, problem. Edward Gibbon, the distinguished British historian of the eighteenth century who wrote one of the most intimidating works of history in our language (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), said simply,
Although the progress of civilisation has undoubtedly contributed to assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less favourable to the virtue of chastity. . . . The refinements of life [seem to] corrupt, [even as] they polish the [relationship] of the sexes. [Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 40 of Great Books of the Western World, 1952, p. 92]
I do not wish us to spend this hour documenting social problems nor wringing our hands over the dangers that such outside influences may hold for us. As serious as such contemporary realities are, I wish to discuss this topic in quite a different way, discuss it specifically for Latter-day Saints--primarily young, unmarried Latter-day Saints, even those attending Brigham Young University. So I conspicuously set aside the horrors of AIDS and national statistics on illegitimate pregnancies and speak rather to a gospel-based view of personal purity.
Indeed, I wish to do something even a bit more difficult than listing the do's and don'ts of personal purity. I wish to speak, to the best of my ability, on why we should be clean, on why moral discipline is such a significant matter in God's eyes. I know that may sound presumptuous, but a philosopher once said, tell me sufficiently why a thing should be done, and I will move heaven and earth to do it. Hoping you will feel the same way as he and fully recognizing my limitations, I wish to try to give at least a partial answer to "Why be morally clean?" I will need first to pose briefly what I see as the doctrinal seriousness of the matter before then offering just three reasons for such seriousness.
The Significance and Sanctity
May I begin with half of a nine-line poem by Robert Frost. (The other half is worth a sermon also, but it will have to wait for another day.) Here are the first four lines of Frost's "Fire and Ice."
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
A second, less poetic but more specific opinion is offered by the writer of Proverbs:
Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?
Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? . . .
But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.
A wound and dishonour shall he get; and his reproach shall not be wiped away. [Proverbs 6:27-33]
In getting at the doctrinal seriousness, why is this matter of sexual relationships so severe that fire is almost always the metaphor, with passion pictured vividly in flames? What is there in the potentially hurtful heat of this that leaves one's soul--or perhaps the whole world, according to Frost--destroyed, if that flame is left unchecked and those passions unrestrained? What is there in all of this that prompts Alma to warn his son Corianton that sexual transgression is "an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost" (Alma 39:5; emphasis added)?
Setting aside sins against the Holy Ghost for a moment as a special category unto themselves, it is LDS doctrine that sexual transgression is second only to murder in the Lord's list of life's most serious sins. By assigning such rank to a physical appetite so conspicuously evident in all of us, what is God trying to tell us about its place in his plan for all men and women in mortality? I submit to you he is doing precisely that--commenting about the very plan of life itself. Clearly God's greatest concerns regarding mortality are how one gets into this world and how one gets out of it. These two most important issues in our very personal and carefully supervised progress are the two issues that he as our Creator and Father and Guide wishes most to reserve to himself. These are the two matters that he has repeatedly told us he wants us never to take illegally, illicitly, unfaithfully, without sanction.
As for the taking of life, we are generally quite responsible. Most people, it seems to me, readily sense the sanctity of life and as a rule do not run up to friends, put a loaded revolver to their heads, and cavalierly pull the trigger. Furthermore, when there is a click of the hammer rather than an explosion of lead, and a possible tragedy seems to have been averted, no one in such a circumstance would be so stupid as to sigh, "Oh, good. I didn't go all the way."
No, "all the way" or not, the insanity of such action with fatal powder and steel is obvious on the face of it. Such a person running about this campus with an arsenal of loaded handguns or military weaponry aimed at fellow students would be apprehended, prosecuted, and institutionalized if in fact such a lunatic would not himself have been killed in all the pandemonium. After such a fictitious moment of horror on this campus (and you are too young to remember my college years when the sniper wasn't fictitious, killing twelve of his fellow students at the University of Texas), we would undoubtedly sit in our dorms or classrooms with terror on our minds for many months to come, wondering how such a thing could possibly happen--especially here at BYU.
No, fortunately, in the case of how life is taken, I think we seem to be quite responsible. The seriousness of that does not often have to be spelled out, and not many sermons need to be devoted to it.
But in the significance and sanctity of giving life, some of us are not so responsible, and in the larger world swirling around us we find near criminal irresponsibility. What would in the case of taking life bring absolute horror and demand grim justice, in the case of giving life brings dirty jokes and four-letter lyrics and crass carnality on the silver screen, home-owned or downtown.
Is such moral turpitude so wrong? That question has always been asked, usually by the guilty. "Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness" (Proverbs 30:20). No murder here. Well, maybe not. But sexual transgression? "He that doeth it destroyeth his own soul." Sounds near fatal to me.
So much for the doctrinal seriousness. Now, with a desire to prevent such painful moments, to avoid what Alma called the "inexpressible horror" of standing in the presence of God unworthily, and to permit the intimacy it is your right and privilege and delight to enjoy in marriage to be untainted by such crushing remorse and guilt--I wish to give those three reasons I mentioned earlier as to why I believe this is an issue of such magnitude and consequence.
The Doctrine of the Soul
First, we simply must understand the revealed, restored Latter-day Saint doctrine of the soul, and the high and inextricable part the body plays in that doctrine. One of the "plain and precious" truths restored to this dispensation is that "the spirit and the body are the soul of man" (D&C88:15; emphasis added) and that when the spirit and body are separated, men and women "cannot receive a fulness of joy" (D&C93:34). Certainly that suggests something of the reason why obtaining a body is so fundamentally important to the plan of salvation in the first place, why sin of any kind is such a serious matter (namely because its automatic consequence is death, the separation of the spirit from the body and the separation of the spirit and the body from God), and why the resurrection of the body is so central to the great abiding and eternal triumph of Christ's atonement. We do not have to be a herd of demonically possessed swine charging down the Gadarene slopes toward the sea to understand that a body is the great prize of mortal life, and that even a pig's will do for those frenzied spirits that rebelled, and to this day remain dispossessed, in their first, unembodied estate.
May I quote a 1913 sermon by Elder James E. Talmage on this doctrinal point:
We have been taught . . . to look upon these bodies of ours as gifts from God. We Latter-day Saints do not regard the body as something to be condemned, something to be abhorred. . . . We regard [the body] as the sign of our royal birthright. . . . We recognize . . . that those who kept not their first estate . . . were denied that inestimable blessing. . . . We believe that these bodies . . . may be made, in very truth, the temple of the Holy Ghost. . . .
It is peculiar to the theology of the Latter-day Saints that we regard the body as an essential part of the soul. Read your dictionaries, the lexicons, and encyclopedias, and you will find that nowhere [in Christianity], outside of the Church of Jesus Christ, is the solemn and eternal truth taught that the soul of man is the body and the spirit combined. [CR, October 1913, p. 117]
So partly in answer to why such seriousness, we answer that one toying with the God-given--and satanically coveted--body of another, toys with the very soul of that individual, toys with the central purpose and product of life, "the very key" to life, as Elder Boyd K. Packer once called it. In trivializing the soul of another (please include the word body there), we trivialize the Atonement that saved that soul and guaranteed its continued existence. And when one toys with the Son of Righteousness, the Day Star himself, one toys with white heat and a flame hotter and holier than the noonday sun. You cannot do so and not be burned. You cannot with impunity "crucify Christ afresh" (see Hebrews 6:6). Exploitation of the body (please include the word soul there) is, in the last analysis, an exploitation of him who is the Light and the Life of the world. Perhaps here Paul's warning to the Corinthians takes on newer, higher meaning:
Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. . . .
Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. . . .
Flee fornication. . . . He that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. . . .
. . . Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. [1 Corinthians 6:13-20; emphasis added]
Our soul is what's at stake here--our spirit and our body. Paul understood that doctrine of the soul every bit as well as James E. Talmage did, because it is gospel truth. The purchase price for our fullness of joy--body and spirit eternally united--is the pure and innocent blood of the Savior of this world. We cannot then say in ignorance or defiance, "Well, it's my life," or worse yet, "It's my body." It is not. "Ye are not your own," Paul said. "Ye are bought with a price." So in answer to the question, "Why does God care so much about sexual transgression?" it is partly because of the precious gift offered by and through his Only Begotten Son to redeem the souls--bodies and spirits--we too often share and abuse in cheap and tawdry ways. Christ restored the very seeds of eternal lives (see D&C132:19, 24), and we desecrate them at our peril. The first key reason for personal purity? Our very souls are involved and at stake.
A Symbol of Total Union
Second, may I suggest that human intimacy, that sacred, physical union ordained of God for a married couple, deals with a symbol that demands special sanctity. Such an act of love between a man and a woman is--or certainly was ordained to be--a symbol of total union: union of their hearts, their hopes, their lives, their love, their family, their future, their everything. It is a symbol that we try to suggest in the temple with a word like seal. The Prophet Joseph Smith once said we perhaps ought to render such a sacred bond as "welding"--that those united in matrimony and eternal families are "welded" together, inseparable if you will, to withstand the temptations of the adversary and the afflictions of mortality. (See D&C 128:18.)
But such a total, virtually unbreakable union, such an unyielding commitment between a man and a woman, can only come with the proximity and permanence afforded in a marriage covenant, with the union of all that they possess--their very hearts and minds, all their days and all their dreams. They work together, they cry together, they enjoy Brahms and Beethoven and breakfast together, they sacrifice and save and live together for all the abundance that such a totally intimate life provides such a couple. And the external symbol of that union, the physical manifestation of what is a far deeper spiritual and metaphysical bonding, is the physical blending that is part of--indeed, a most beautiful and gratifying expression of--that larger, more complete union of eternal purpose and promise.
As delicate as it is to mention in such a setting, I nevertheless trust your maturity to understand that physiologically we are created as men and women to fit together in such a union. In this ultimate physical expression of one man and one woman they are as nearly and as literally "one" as two separate physical bodies can ever be. It is in that act of ultimate physical intimacy we most nearly fulfill the commandment of the Lord given to Adam and Eve, living symbols for all married couples, when he invited them to cleave unto one another only, and thus become "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24).
Obviously, such a commandment to these two, the first husband and wife of the human family, has unlimited implications--social, cultural, and religious as well as physical--but that is exactly my point. As all couples come to that moment of bonding in mortality, it is to be just such a complete union. That commandment cannot be fulfilled, and that symbolism of "one flesh" cannot be preserved, if we hastily and guiltily and surreptitiously share intimacy in a darkened corner of a darkened hour, then just as hastily and guiltily and surreptitiously retreat to our separate worlds--not to eat or live or cry or laugh together, not to do the laundry and the dishes and the homework, not to manage a budget and pay the bills and tend the children and plan together for the future. No, we cannot do that until we are truly one--united, bound, linked, tied, welded, sealed, married.
Can you see then the moral schizophrenia that comes from pretending we are one, sharing the physical symbols and physical intimacy of our union, but then fleeing, retreating, severing all such other aspects--and symbols--of what was meant to be a total obligation, only to unite again furtively some other night or, worse yet, furtively unite (and you can tell how cynically I use that word) with some other partner who is no more bound to us, no more one with us than the last was or than the one that will come next week or next month or next year or anytime before the binding commitments of marriage?
You must wait--you must wait until you can give everything, and you cannot give everything until you are at least legally and, for Latter-day Saint purposes, eternally pronounced as one. To give illicitly that which is not yours to give (remember--"you are not your own") and to give only part of that which cannot be followed with the gift of your whole heart and your whole life and your whole self is its own form of emotional Russian roulette. If you persist in sharing part without the whole, in pursuing satisfaction devoid of symbolism, in giving parts and pieces and inflamed fragments only, you run the terrible risk of such spiritual, psychic damage that you may undermine both your physical intimacy and your wholehearted devotion to a truer, later love. You may come to that moment of real love, of total union, only to discover to your horror that what you should have saved has been spent, and--mark my words--only God's grace can recover that piecemeal dissipation of your virtue.
A good Latter-day Saint friend, Dr. Victor L. Brown, Jr., has written of this issue:
Fragmentation enables its users to counterfeit intimacy. . . .
If we relate to each other in fragments, at best we miss full relationships. At worst, we manipulate and exploit others for our gratification. Sexual fragmentation can be particularly harmful because it gives powerful physiological rewards which, though illusory, can temporarily persuade us to overlook the serious deficits in the overall relationship. Two people may marry for physical gratification and then discover that the illusion of union collapses under the weight of intellectual, social, and spiritual incompatibilities. . . .
Sexual fragmentation is particularly harmful because it is particularly deceptive. The intense human intimacy that should be enjoyed in and symbolized by sexual union is counterfeited by sensual episodes which suggest--but cannot deliver--acceptance, understanding, and love. Such encounters mistake the end for the means as lonely, desperate people seek a common denominator which will permit the easiest, quickest gratification. [Victor L. Brown, Jr., Human Intimacy: Illusion and Reality (Salt Lake City, Utah: Parliament Publishers, 1981), pp. 5-6]
Listen to a far more biting observation by a non-Latter-day Saint regarding such acts devoid of both the soul and symbolism we have been discussing. He writes:
Our sexuality has been animalized, stripped of the intricacy of feeling with which human beings have endowed it, leaving us to contemplate only the act, and to fear our impotence in it. It is this animalization from which the sexual manuals cannot escape, even when they try to do so, because they are reflections of it. They might [as well] be textbooks for veterinarians. [Fairlie, Seven Deadly Sins, p. 182]
In this matter of counterfeit intimacy and deceptive gratification, I express particular caution to the men who hear this message. I have heard all my life that it is the young woman who has to assume the responsibility for controlling the limits of intimacy in courtship because a young man cannot. What an unacceptable response to such a serious issue! What kind of man is he, what priesthood or power or strength or self-control does this man have that lets him develop in society, grow to the age of mature accountability, perhaps even pursue a university education and prepare to affect the future of colleagues and kingdoms and the course of the world, but yet does not have the mental capacity or the moral will to say, "I will not do that thing"? No, this sorry drugstore psychology would have us say, "He just can't help himself. His glands have complete control over his life--his mind, his will, his entire future."
To say that a young woman in such a relationship has to bear her responsibility and that of the young man's too is the least fair assertion I can imagine. In most instances if there is sexual transgression, I lay the burden squarely on the shoulders of the young man--for our purposes probably a priesthood bearer--and that's where I believe God intended responsibility to be. In saying that I do not excuse young women who exercise no restraint and have not the character or conviction to demand intimacy only in its rightful role. I have had enough experience in Church callings to know that women as well as men can be predatory. But I refuse to buy some young man's feigned innocence who wants to sin and call it psychology.
Indeed, most tragically, it is the young woman who is most often the victim, it is the young woman who most often suffers the greater pain, it is the young woman who most often feels used and abused and terribly unclean. And for that imposed uncleanliness a man will pay, as surely as the sun sets and rivers run to the sea.
Note the prophet Jacob's straightforward language on this account in the Book of Mormon. After a bold confrontation on the subject of sexual transgression among the Nephites, he quotes Jehovah:
For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land. . . .
And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people . . . shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.
For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction. [Jacob 2:31-33; emphasis added]
Don't be deceived and don't be destroyed. Unless such fire is controlled, your clothes and your future will be burned. And your world, short of painful and perfect repentance, will go up in flames. I give that to you on good word--I give it to you on God's word.
A HOLY SACRAMENT
That leads me to my last reason, a third effort to say why. After soul and symbol, the word is sacrament, a term closely related to the other two. Sexual intimacy is not only a symbolic union between a man and a woman--the uniting of their very souls--but it is also symbolic of a union between mortals and deity, between otherwise ordinary and fallible humans uniting for a rare and special moment with God himself and all the powers by which he gives life in this wide universe of ours.
In this latter sense, human intimacy is a sacrament, a very special kind of symbol. For our purpose here today, a sacrament could be any one of a number of gestures or acts or ordinances that unite us with God and his limitless powers. We are imperfect and mortal; he is perfect and immortal. But from time to time--indeed, as often as is possible and appropriate--we find ways and go to places and create circumstances where we can unite symbolically with him, and in so doing gain access to his power. Those special moments of union with God are sacramental moments--such as kneeling at a marriage altar, or blessing a newborn baby, or partaking of the emblems of the Lord's supper. This latter ordinance is the one we in the Church have come to associate most traditionally with the word sacrament, though it is technically only one of many such moments when we formally take the hand of God and feel his divine power.
These are moments when we quite literally unite our will with God's will, our spirit with his spirit, where communion through the veil becomes very real. At such moments we not only acknowledge his divinity, but we quite literally take something of that divinity to ourselves. Such are the holy sacraments.
Now, once again, I know of no one who would, for example, rush into the middle of a sacramental service, grab the linen from the tables, throw the bread the full length of the room, tip the water trays onto the floor, and laughingly retreat from the building to await an opportunity to do the same thing at another worship service the next Sunday. No one within the sound of my voice would do that during one of the truly sacred moments of our religious worship. Nor would anyone here violate any of the other sacramental moments in our lives, those times when we consciously claim God's power and by invitation stand with him in privilege and principality.
But I wish to stress with you this morning, as my third of three reasons to be clean, that sexual union is also, in its own profound way, a very real sacrament of the highest order, a union not only of a man and a woman but very much the union of that man and woman with God. Indeed, if our definition of sacrament is that act of claiming and sharing and exercising God's own inestimable power, then I know of virtually no other divine privilege so routinely given to us all--women or men, ordained or unordained, Latter-day Saint or non-Latter-day Saint--than the miraculous and majestic power of transmitting life, the unspeakable, unfathomable, unbroken power of procreation. There are those special moments in your lives when the other, more formal ordinances of the gospel--the sacraments, if you will--allow you to feel the grace and grandeur of God's power. Many are one-time experiences (such as our own confirmation or our own marriage), and some are repeatable (such as administering to the sick or doing ordinance work for others in the temple). But I know of nothing so earth-shatteringly powerful and yet so universally and unstintingly given to us as the God-given power available in every one of us from our early teen years on to create a human body, that wonder of all wonders, a genetically and spiritually unique being never seen before in the history of the world and never to be duplicated again in all the ages of eternity--a child, your child--with eyes and ears and fingers and toes and a future of unspeakable grandeur.
Imagine that, if you will. Veritable teenagers--and all of us for many decades thereafter--carrying daily, hourly, minute-to-minute, virtually every waking and sleeping moment of our lives, the power and the chemistry and the eternally transmitted seeds of life to grant someone else her second estate, someone else his next level of development in the divine plan of salvation. I submit to you that no power, priesthood or otherwise, is given by God so universally to so many with virtually no control over its use except self-control. And I submit to you that you will never be more like God at any other time in this life than when you are expressing that particular power. Of all the titles he has chosen for himself, Father is the one he declares, and Creation is his watchword--especially human creation, creation in his image. His glory isn't a mountain, as stunning as mountains are. It isn't in sea or sky or snow or sunrise, as beautiful as they all are. It isn't in art or technology, be that a concerto or computer. No, his glory--and his grief--is in his children. You and I, we are his prized possessions, and we are the earthly evidence, however inadequate, of what he truly is. Human life--that is the greatest of God's powers, the most mysterious and magnificent chemistry of it all--and you and I have been given it, but under the most serious and sacred of restrictions. You and I who can make neither mountain nor moonlight, not one raindrop nor a single rose--yet we have this greater gift in an absolutely unlimited way. And the only control placed on us is self-control--self-control born of respect for the divine sacramental power it is.
Surely God's trust in us to respect this future-forming gift is awesomely staggering. We who may not be able to repair a bicycle nor assemble an average jigsaw puzzle--yet with all our weaknesses and imperfections, we carry this procreative power that makes us very much like God in at least one grand and majestic way.
A SERIOUS MATTER
Souls. Symbols. Sacraments. Does any of this help you understand why human intimacy is such a serious matter? Why it is so right and rewarding and stunningly beautiful when it is within marriage and approved of God (not just "good" but "very good," he declared to Adam and Eve), and so blasphemously wrong--like unto murder--when it is outside such a covenant? It is my understanding that we park and pet and sleep over and sleep with at the peril of our very lives. Our penalty may not come on the precise day of our transgression, but it comes surely and certainly enough, and were it not for a merciful God and the treasured privilege of personal repentance, far too many would even now be feeling that hellish pain, which (like the passion we have been discussing) is also always described in the metaphor of fire. Someday, somewhere, sometime the morally unclean will, until they repent, pray like the rich man, wishing Lazarus to "dip . . . his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame" (Luke 16:24).
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
In closing, consider this from two students of civilization's long, instructive story:
No one man [or woman], however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life [or hers] before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group. [Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), pp. 35-36]
Or, in the more ecclesiastical words of James E. Talmage:
It has been declared in the solemn word of revelation, that the spirit and the body constitute the soul of man; and, therefore, we should look upon this body as something that shall endure in the resurrected state, beyond the grave, something to be kept pure and holy. Be not afraid of soiling its hands; be not afraid of scars that may come to it if won in earnest effort, or [won] in honest fight, but beware of scars that disfigure, that have come to you in places where you ought not have gone, that have befallen you in unworthy undertakings [pursued where you ought not have been]; beware of the wounds of battles in which you have been fighting on the wrong side. [Talmage, CR, October 1913, p. 117]
I love you for wanting to be on the right side of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I express my pride in and appreciation for your faithfulness. As I said earlier, you are an absolute inspiration to me. I consider it the greatest of all professional privileges to be associated with you at this university at a time in your lives when you are finalizing what you believe and forging what your future will be.
If some few of you are feeling the "scars . . . that have come to you in places where you ought not have gone," I wish to extend to you the special peace and promise available through the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. I testify of his love and of the restored gospel principles and ordinances which make that love available to us with all their cleansing and healing power. I testify of the power of these principles and ordinances, including complete and redeeming repentance, which are only fully realized in this the true and living church of the true and living God. That we may "come unto Christ" for the fullness of soul and symbol and sacrament he offers us, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
the family: a proclamation to the world
The Family: A Proclamation to the World
 |
The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children.
All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.
In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.
The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God's commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.
We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God's eternal plan.
Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. "Children are an heritage of the Lord" (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.
The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.
We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.
We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.
This proclamation was read by President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society Meeting held September 23, 1995, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
the women in our lives
The Women in Our Lives
President Gordon B. Hinckley
How thankful I am, how thankful we all must be, for the women in our lives.
My brethren and sisters, at the outset, if you will bear with me, I wish to exercise a personal privilege. Six months ago, at the close of our conference, I stated that my beloved companion of 67 years was seriously ill. She passed away two days later. It was April 6, a significant day to all of us of this Church. I wish to thank publicly the dedicated doctors and wonderful nurses who attended her during her final illness.
My children and I were at her bedside as she slipped peacefully into eternity. As I held her hand and saw mortal life drain from her fingers, I confess I was overcome. Before I married her, she had been the girl of my dreams, to use the words of a song then popular. She was my dear companion for more than two-thirds of a century, my equal before the Lord, really my superior. And now in my old age, she has again become the girl of my dreams.
Immediately following her passing there was a tremendous outpouring of love from across the world. Great quantities of beautiful floral offerings were sent. Large contributions were made in her name to the Perpetual Education Fund and her academic chair at Brigham Young University . There were literally hundreds of letters. We have boxes filled with them from many we know and from very many we do not know. They all express admiration for her and sympathy and love for us whom she left behind.
We regret that we have been unable to respond individually to these many expressions. So I now take this occasion to thank you every one for your great kindness toward us. Thank you so very, very much, and please excuse our failure to reply. The task was beyond our capacity, but your expressions have shed an aura of comfort in our time of grief.
I am grateful to be able to say that in our long life together I cannot remember a serious quarrel. Small differences occasionally, yes, but nothing of a serious nature. I believe our marriage has been as idyllic as anyone's could possibly be.
I recognize that many of you are similarly blessed, and I compliment you most warmly, for when all is said and done there is no association richer than the companionship of husband and wife, and nothing more portentous for good or evil than the unending consequences of marriage.
I see those consequences constantly. I see both beauty and tragedy. And so I have chosen to say a few words today on the women in our lives.
I begin with the Creation of the world.
We read in the book of Genesis and in the book of Moses of that great, singular, and remarkable undertaking. The Almighty was the architect of that creation. Under His direction it was executed by His Beloved Son, the Great Jehovah, who was assisted by Michael, the archangel.
There came first the forming of heaven and earth, to be followed by the separation of the light from the darkness. The waters were removed from the land. Then came vegetation, followed by the animals. There followed the crowning creation of man. Genesis records that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).
But the process was not complete.
"For Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
"And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman" (Genesis 2:20–23).
And so Eve became God's final creation, the grand summation of all of the marvelous work that had gone before.
Notwithstanding this preeminence given the creation of woman, she has so frequently through the ages been relegated to a secondary position. She has been put down. She has been denigrated. She has been enslaved. She has been abused. And yet some few of the greatest characters of scripture have been women of integrity, accomplishment, and faith.
We have Esther, Naomi, and Ruth of the Old Testament. We have Sariah of the Book of Mormon. We have Mary, the very mother of the Redeemer of the world. We have her as the chosen of God, described by Nephi as "a virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins" (1 Nephi 11:15).
She it was who carried the child Jesus into Egypt to save His life from the wrath of Herod. She it was who nurtured Him in His boyhood and young manhood. She stood before Him when His pain-wracked body hung upon the cross on Calvary's hill. In His suffering He said to her, "Woman, behold thy son!" And to His disciple in a plea that he care for her, He said, "Behold thy mother!" (John 19:26–27).
Crossing through His life we have Mary and Martha, and Mary of Magdala. She it was who came to the tomb that first Easter morning. And to her, a woman, He first appeared as the resurrected Lord. Why is it that even though Jesus placed woman in a position of preeminence, so many men who profess His name fail to do so?
In His grand design, when God first created man, He created a duality of the sexes. The ennobling expression of that duality is found in marriage. One individual is complementary to the other. As Paul stated, "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:11).
There is no other arrangement that meets the divine purposes of the Almighty. Man and woman are His creations. Their duality is His design. Their complementary relationships and functions are fundamental to His purposes. One is incomplete without the other.
I recognize that we have many wonderful women among us who do not have the opportunity of marriage. But they, too, make such a tremendous contribution. They serve the Church faithfully and ably. They teach in the organizations. They stand as officers.
I witnessed a very interesting thing the other day. The General Authorities were in a meeting, and the presidency of the Relief Society were there with us. These able women stood in our council room and shared with us principles of welfare and of helping those who are in distress. Our stature as officers of this Church was not diminished by what they did. Our capacities to serve were increased.
There are some men who, in a spirit of arrogance, think they are superior to women. They do not seem to realize that they would not exist but for the mother who gave them birth. When they assert their superiority they demean her. It has been said, "Man can not degrade woman without himself falling into degradation; he can not elevate her without at the same time elevating himself" (Alexander Walker, in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book [1923], 204).
How very true that is. We see the bitter fruit of that degradation all about us. Divorce is one of its results. This evil runs rampant through our society. It is the outcome of disrespect for one's marriage partner. It manifests itself in neglect, in criticism, in abuse, in abandonment. We in the Church are not immune from it.
Jesus declared, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matthew 19:6).
The word man is used in the generic sense, but the fact is that it is predominantly men who bring about the conditions that lead to divorce.
After dealing with hundreds of divorce situations through the years, I am satisfied that the application of a single practice would do more than all else to solve this grievous problem.
If every husband and every wife would constantly do whatever might be possible to ensure the comfort and happiness of his or her companion, there would be very little, if any, divorce. Argument would never be heard. Accusations would never be leveled. Angry explosions would not occur. Rather, love and concern would replace abuse and meanness.
There was a popular song we sang many years ago, the lyrics of which said:
I want to be happy,
But I won't be happy
Till I make you happy, too.
(Irving Caesar, "I Want to Be Happy" [1924])
How true this is.
Every woman is a daughter of God. You cannot offend her without offending Him. I plead with the men of this Church to look for and nurture the divinity that lies within their companions. To the degree that happens, there will be harmony, peace, enrichment of family life, nurturing love.
Well did President McKay remind us that "no other success [in life] can compensate for failure in the home" (quoted from J. E. McCulloch, Home: The Savior of Civilization [1924], 42; in Conference Report, Apr. 1935, 116).
Likewise, the truth of which President Lee reminded us: "The [greatest] work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home" ("Maintain Your Place as a Woman," Ensign, Feb. 1972, 51).
The cure for most marital troubles does not lie in divorce. It lies in repentance and forgiveness, in expressions of kindness and concern. It is to be found in application of the Golden Rule.
It is a scene of great beauty when a young man and a young woman join hands at the altar in a covenant before God that they will honor and love one another. Then how dismal the picture when a few months later, or a few years later, there are offensive remarks, mean and cutting words, raised voices, bitter accusations.
It need not be, my dear brothers and sisters. We can rise above these mean and beggarly elements in our lives (see Galatians 4:9). We can look for and recognize the divine nature in one another, which comes to us as children of our Father in Heaven. We can live together in the God-given pattern of marriage in accomplishing that of which we are capable if we will exercise discipline of self and refrain from trying to discipline our companion.
The women in our lives are creatures endowed with particular qualities, divine qualities, which cause them to reach out in kindness and with love to those about them. We can encourage that outreach if we will give them opportunity to give expression to the talents and impulses that lie within them. In our old age my beloved companion said to me quietly one evening, "You have always given me wings to fly, and I have loved you for it."
I once knew a man who has since passed on but who insisted on making all of the decisions for his wife and children. They could not buy a pair of shoes without him. They could not take a piano lesson. They could not serve in the Church without his consent. I have since witnessed the outcome of that attitude, and that outcome is not good.
My father never hesitated to compliment my mother. We children knew that he loved her because of the way he treated her. He deferred to her. And I shall ever be profoundly grateful for his example. Many of you have been blessed likewise.
Now I might go on but it is not necessary. I wish only to give emphasis to the great, salient truth that we are all children of God, both sons and daughters, brothers and sisters.
As a father, do I love my daughters less than I love my sons? No. If I am guilty of any imbalance, it is in favor of my girls. I have said that when a man gets old he had better have daughters about him. They are so kind and good and thoughtful. I think I can say that my sons are able and wise. My daughters are clever and kind. And "my cup runneth over" (Psalm 23:5) because of this.
Women are such a necessary part of the plan of happiness which our Heavenly Father has outlined for us. That plan cannot operate without them.
Brethren, there is too much of unhappiness in the world. There is too much of misery and heartache and heartbreak. There are too many tears shed by grieving wives and daughters. There is too much negligence and abuse and unkindness.
God has given us the priesthood, and that priesthood cannot be exercised, "only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile" (D&C 121:41–42).
How thankful I am, how thankful we all must be, for the women in our lives. God bless them. May His great love distill upon them and crown them with luster and beauty, grace and faith. And may His Spirit distill upon us as men and lead us ever to hold them in respect, in gratitude, giving encouragement, strength, nurture, and love, which is the very essence of the gospel of our Redeemer and Lord. For this I humbly pray, in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)