Provident Living Tidbits

For Sunday, September 25th

From The Value of Home Life by Neil A. Maxwell, Ensign Feb. 1972.  

A good member of the Church must understand the implications of his beliefs with regard to the home. 

This different commitment will mean, among many things, knowing—

—that because the home is so crucial, it will be the source of our greatest failures as well as our greatest joys.

—that home is the one place we will be in that will require us to practice every major gospel principle and not just a few, as may be the case in some temporary relationships.

—that the pressures of life in a family will mean that we shall be known as we are, that our frailties will be exposed and, hopefully, we shall then work on them.

—that the love and thoughtfulness required in the home are no abstract exercise in love. They are real. It is no mere rhetoric concerning some distant human cause; it is an encounter with raw selfishness, with the need for civility and taking turns, of being hurt and yet forgiving, of being at the mercy of others’ moods and yet understanding, in part, why we sometimes inflict pain on each other.

—that family life is a constant challenge, not a periodic performance we can render on a stage quickly and run for the privacy of a “dressing room” to be alone with ourselves, for the home gives us a great chance to align our public and private behavior, to reduce the hypocrisy in our lives, to be more congruent with Christ.

Thus, to commit oneself to home and family is to do a wondrous thing. It is a high adventure. It is not a task for those who wish to run away, nor for those whose human causes are chosen because the cause is distant and makes no real demands of them. It is the same for all the basic teachings of Jesus that constitute that solitary path to salvation.

In this sense, the straight and narrow way is a path only for the brave!

Of course, commitment to principles with a divine difference—hard doctrines that produce significant modifications in life-styles—means involvement and occasional disappointment in a divine church full of imperfect people; it means getting banged about a bit, but it also means joy now and everlastingly in a church that is divinely managed on the things that matter most.

For Sunday, October 9th


Viva Vegetables: Winter Squash