The Importance of Family
We recently spoke of the need to be forgiving. The best place to practice and develop that principle is in our homes as we conduct our daily family affairs.
The family unit is one of the great tools the Creator provided to help keep us on course. It is in a family setting that we most often learn about love, forgiveness, self-discipline and work. It is the best place to acquire beliefs and values. It is there we should learn the lessons of life.
Our family is the most important association we have. Its importance cannot be overstressed. The late spiritual leader David O. McKay offered this wise counsel: “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”1 And, as Harold B. Lee advised, “The most important work you will ever do…will be within the walls of your own home.”2 If we will work as hard at improving our own families as we do at may of the other things we attempt, our entire world will be a better place in which to live.
Family success does not happen automatically. It is a task which requires high priority and one that we cannot begin too soon. We must pray and work to develop pleasant family relationships, the vital foundation of which is loving parents.
Young people would do well to remember that a proper partner and a proper courtship are vital keys to a happy marriage and a successful family. Unhappy family relations is one of the greatest tragedies in life. None of us would willfully choose such an existence, yet that is what we do when we make hasty or improper choices in building a marriage.
One of the greatest gifts mankind has is his freedom. We are free to set our own course; free to raise our own families; free to build our own society. We should remember, as one wrote, that “…concentrating on the quality of life in the home is, ultimately, the best way to raise the quality of life in society.”3
The life that is spent improving the family is a life that is full and rich and beautiful. But too often we are “simple souls who stray” and who find that challenge difficult. Indeed, there can be no more important challenge than the success and happiness of our families.
1President David O. McKay, April 04, 1964, Conference Address
2President Harold B. Lee
3Neal A. Maxwell, A Time to Choose
October 08, 1972
Broadcast Number 2,246