The greatest joys and the greatest sorrows we experience are in family relationships. The joys come from putting the welfare of others above our own. That is what love is. And the sorrow comes primarily from selfishness, which is the absence of love. The ideal God holds for us is to form families in the way most likely to lead to happiness and away from sorrow.
Interpretation
Family relationships bring both joy and sorrow, and true love involves selflessness.
This quote highlights the significant emotional spectrum that family relationships entail, emphasizing that our greatest joys arise from selflessly caring for others. Conversely, the greatest sorrows stem from selfishness, which detracts from love and can cause harm within family dynamics. The quote suggests that the ideal way to cultivate happiness in families is through love and selflessness, aligning with a higher moral standard set by God.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a family gathering to emphasize the importance of love and support.
My point is to urge you to find ways to recognize and remember God’s kindness. It will build our testimonies. You may not keep a journal. You may not share whatever record you keep with those you love and serve. But you and they will be blessed as you remember what the Lord has done.
Increased spiritual strength is a gift from God which He can give when we push in His service to our limits. Through the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, our natures can be changed. Then our power to carry burdens can be increased more than enough to compensate for the increased service we will be asked to give.
Whether or not you choose to keep your covenant to always remember Him, He always remembers you.
What all of us long for in our hearts, at Christmastime and always, is to feel bound together in love with the sweet assurance that it can last forever.
We cannot control what others choose to do, and so we cannot force our children to heaven, but we can determine what we will do. And we can decide that we will do all we can to bring down the powers of heaven into that family we want so much to have forever.
It is serving God and others persistently with full heart and soul that turns testimony of truth into unbreakable spiritual strength.
If I were to give advice to young people, high-achieving young people for example, I’d have to say, don’t neglect your family. Politics is important, sitting at the head table is glamorous. Traveling around the world, trying to do something for world peace was wonderful. But family and friends and faith are what really matter in life. And I know that. I see it so clearly now.
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
My mother was a very wonderful woman. When she and my dad divorced, she moved to California and worked two jobs in the cannery at night and as a waitress during the day. But she saved enough money to establish a restaurant.
Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.
They would always be a family, but if she'd learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn't a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. You couldn't control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.