Fathers Matter

 I have been focused this morning on the 12 fathers in our extended family in the next generation, and the three additional fathers in the generation after that. I am deeply humbled by how they have far exceeded my performance as a father, as I look back on all the years since we were married. In every particular they have excelled and continue to bless the lives of their wives and their children.

It is characteristic of this generation, perhaps, that when circumstances get difficult too many fathers abandon their families and move away from their responsibilities and seek what may appear to be easier paths. However, for those who keep after it and stay the course, there are immeasurable blessings in store both here in this life and in the life eternal beyond.

Last week we attended an endowment session in the Jordan River Temple, and then two sealing sessions after that. We were reminded by one of the sealers that perhaps we all knew each other in the pre-existence, and we may have met people who knew their time on earth would not come at a time when the fulness of the gospel ordinances would be available to them. Perhaps they approached us in the pre-existence and asked us to do that proxy ordinance work for them. We readily agreed, and week by week we go now and perform that ministering labor on their behalf. Will they accept our efforts? Of course they will. They are our progenitors. We have the fulness of the gospel among us in this dispensation, and we are their seed. Embedded in our souls is the spiritual DNA we inherited from them. In that session I offered the observation to the group that had come to me just that morning as we sat pondering the scriptures in the chapel before the endowment session began. I read in Moses in the Pearl of Great Price:

And it came to pass, as the voice was still speaking, Moses cast his eyes and beheld the earth, yea, even all of it; and there was not a particle of it which he did not behold, discerning it by the Spirit of God.

And he beheld also the inhabitants thereof, and there was not a soul which he beheld not; and he discerned them by the Spirit of God; and their numbers were great, even numberless as the sand upon the sea shore. (Moses 1:27-28).

I also suggested this process might be similar to that which the Savior surely must have experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane when He suffered alone for the sins of everyone, even for all the souls on all the worlds on which they had lived and He created, "worlds without end." The atonement is individual and it is infinite and eternal. It touches everyone with the exclusion of no one, and He knows each of us personally. He knows our names, and He knows our circumstances. He loves us and He will succor us individually as we reach out for His help. We are never left alone and we are never left comfortless. It's the reason we have a prophet in our midst who is pleading for us to cultivate our relationship with God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, and to get on and to stay on the covenant path.

"For behold, this is my work and my glory - to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." (Moses 1:39).

So, on this Fathers Day 2022, let me offer my congratulations to all the fathers who are doing their best to honor their covenants and to help their children find and then stay on the covenant path. It is a great work in this generation to do the work of bringing to pass the mortality of children, and to work in the gospel harness with God the Father and Jesus Christ who will add to our work their work of immortality and eternal life.

If you are one who is seemingly on the brink of walking away, I encourage you to stay the course, pray for the help to sustain you, and seek professional help if needed. There is nothing "out there" to surpass your role as father in the lives of your children. They will repay you a hundred fold in the years ahead.