After our dinner date last night, my husband spent the night really sick from our meal. This morning, he was finally able to get some sleep but had to miss our church meetings. When I came home from church, I found him working on the “Love One Another” puzzle I had gotten for our family to do during general conference (but hadn’t ended up using!).
We had worked on it together a little the other night, searching for the edge pieces and triumphantly finding the 4 cornerstones.
This caused me to reflect on the gift of living prophets. Why?
When we were a young family, with our three oldest in our first home. I had a bulletin board by the kitchen table on which I would post quotes from our prophet at the time–President Gordon B. Hinckley.
The quotes I put up on that board were like the constellations, guiding me as a young mother to make choices that conformed to God’s wisdom.
President Hinckley gave a message called “Four Cornerstones of a Happy Home” that I had read that I really wanted to live. These four cornerstones are:
- Mutual Respect
- The Soft Answer
- Financial Honesty
- Family Prayer.
I imagine that these four qualities are nearly universally agreed upon in all religions and validated by current social science data.
Do you know? Are you of another faith? Do you have evidence in your faith that these are also critical elements of a happy home? Are you a social scientist? Could you share with us research that has been done that shows the benefits of these four choices?
I don’t need other validation that what I have had in my heart over 30 years of living on faith and applying these principles. They have proven true and extremely valuable in fortifying our marriage and family relationships. We could testify of it!
But today we live in a society where we are so diverse, that we need to meet in the center of our concentric circles. We need to build bridges of understanding and connection so that together we can celebrate universal truth in our stories, our art, our music, our relationships, our neighborhoods. We want to find connection because we want to be friends.
We want to be friends!
It’s hard to be friends when the bridge between two people has been destroyed. It is much better to preserve the bridges that exist and strengthen them, agreeing on as much as we can agree upon and celebrating the joy that comes from that!
When I got home from church, my husband had made great progress on the puzzle but was stumped on one piece at the top. He asked for my eyes to help him find the piece.
He had been searching, organizing the pieces into clumps of color, but hadn’t been able to find the orange-background-with-black-hair piece he needed.
I looked at the piece of the picture on the puzzle box top and set about searching.
I didn’t find it right off. We had our children coming over for a birthday dinner, and I needed to get started on it. I knew it wasn’t a big deal, but I asked Heavenly Father in a quick prayer if He could help me find the piece so I could get going on finishing the dinner preparations.
Within moments I spotted the missing piece.
When Lane returned, he was astounded that I had found it. “I prayed!” I reported.
Prayer works–especially when we do.
What prayers have you offered that have been answered? Which prayers have you offered which have not been answered?
Which questions do you have about your parenting or marriage that are needing to be asked so you can get the divine help you need? Which questions have I asked?
I asked Heavenly Father a question about education and how I could help. He answered with the 10-finger pattern:
I am. I can. I will. I do. I did it!
See the good. Taste the good. Touch the good. Feel the good. Love the good.
There is a lot in these two 5-finger patterns. We are just getting started. I wonder if you have the missing pieces for the area of expertise and experience that you hold in your hands and heart and mind.
I wonder how many children would be blessed if you shared what you know, distilled to the smallest seeds of truth that you could hold in one hand. I wonder how God would answer you if you asked Him to help you see what they were.
And all thy achildren shall be btaught of the Lord; and great shall be the cpeace of thy children. (Isaiah 54:13)
This is the purpose of this website: to help us teach all of the children in the world–not just whatever we want, but truth. Truth that they can build their lives on. Truth that won’t fail them, so that they can practice charity, which never faileth, and build bridges of peace and love in ways that we haven’t done yet. The Savior has prepared them. The children of the world can do it, if we feed it to them in a delicious, simple, true way.
Do you have the missing piece? What would you like to add?
Learn more about how you can contribute your knowledge, skills and talents this week here.