Blessing All the Families of the Earth

Elder Bruce C. Hafen, an emeritus member of the Seventy, once received a phone call from the editor of a national news magazine. The editor wanted to talk about a recent book that explored the history of beliefs about heaven across a variety of religions.

“The authors found that the public feels a widespread hunger for heaven—and families in heaven,” Elder Hafen wrote. But while most people still believed in life after death, eternal love, and heavenly family reunions, “most Christian churches offer little response to this inner hunger”—with one exception: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In the Savior’s restored Church, we have sacred temples. We have eternal marriage, with sealing authority that blesses beyond physical death. We have the promise of an eternal future with loved ones in the presence of the Father and the Son. Given all of this, the authors concluded that the Latter-day Saint concept of heaven is the most complete—and, I would add, the happiest.

“What a discovery!” Elder Hafen observed. “Most people today long for eternal families, and the [restored gospel of Jesus Christ] fulfills that longing better than any other known set of ideas [or religious creeds]. I wish the whole world could hear [our] children singing the glad news: ‘Families can be together forever.’”

Families are not just a convenient social arrangement. They are the eternal pattern of heaven. They are “central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.” As President Russell M. Nelson (1924–2025) taught us: “[The Lord] created the earth [so] that we could gain physical bodies and form families. He established His Church to exalt families. He provides temples so that families can be together forever.”

But our interest in strong families is not just about eternal destinies. The family plays an essential role in our mortal happiness as well. Our Heavenly Father, who knows perfectly what brings happiness now and eternally, sends His children to families—imperfect as they might be—and invites us to build and nurture strong families. Of course, “disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.” But nothing can replace the essential, divinely appointed responsibilities of husband and wife, father and mother.

Research on “biological, bonded, two-parent families” continues to show that the family is indispensable in preserving “deep bonds of love and affection.” It is “the primary incubator for stable, well-adjusted, and socially conscious individuals.”

Of course, it shouldn’t surprise us that something so important to God’s plan would face opposition. Satan has never been family friendly, and his efforts are only becoming more urgent “because he knoweth that he hath but a short time” (Revelation 12:12). As President M. Russell Ballard (1928–2023), Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said, “Satan knows that the surest and most effective way to disrupt the Lord’s work is to diminish the effectiveness of the family and the sanctity of the home.”

Knowing what we know about God’s eternal family, His plan for His children, and the eternal significance of family relationships, we should be among the world’s most diligent defenders of the family.

How do we do this?

President Dallin H. Oaks offered this counsel: “The family proclamation … is the Lord’s reemphasis of the gospel truths we need to sustain us through current challenges to the family.”

In our personal lives, we can do the “small and simple things” (Alma 37:6) that strengthen family relationships. This includes following the principles of successful families and marriages outlined in the family proclamation: “faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.” Regardless of our current family situation, we can show by our actions that family relationships are eternally important to us.

As “responsible citizens” in our communities, we can “promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family.”

We are the Lord’s latter-day covenant people. We are inheritors of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—promises that have everything to do with families. Those promises come with the sacred call to bless “all the families of the earth.” And one important way we do that is by living, defending, and sharing the eternal truth that “the family is ordained of God” and that “ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.”

When Sister Uchtdorf and I watch our family members make sacred covenants with our loving, eternal Heavenly Father, our hearts fill with joy and gratitude. We rejoice not only in our children and their children but also in our parents and their parents. We ponder with profound love how gospel covenants unite us across generations. It’s an experience not unlike seeing “a ladder set up on the earth, … the top of it [reaching] to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Genesis 28:12).

The blessings the Lord promised to Jacob in his dream extend to all His covenant children—including you and me. As the Lord did for Jacob, He will answer us “in the day of [our] distress” (Genesis 35:3) if we choose Him.

“Behold,” the Lord said, “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, … for I will not leave thee” (Genesis 28:15).

Like Jacob, we all have a wilderness to cross. Sometimes the promised blessings seem far away. When serious problems or challenges come, we may question the Lord’s love. We may even feel that God has forsaken us. Despite our best efforts at discipleship, we may feel we are not receiving the blessings we were hoping for.

Brothers and sisters, dear friends, the covenant path is a joyful path, though at times it may be stained with tears. If you feel that parts of the plan of happiness are not fulfilled in your life now, please trust that the Lord is mindful of you and will bless you in His due time, according to His wisdom.

Faith in Jesus Christ and His promises inspires us to look forward, not backward. Because of Him, our future need not be held captive by anything that has happened in the past or is blocking our view right now. Yes, we all are, or will be, wounded in one way or another. But we believe in the Great Healer. We trust Him—so much, in fact, that we embrace His promises, fully “persuaded of them,” even when they are still “afar off” (Hebrews 11:13).

“Be we all reminded that, in the Lord’s own way and time, no blessings will be withheld from His faithful Saints,” said President Nelson. “The Lord will judge and reward each individual according to heartfelt desire as well as deed.”

I promise that as we follow and share our Heavenly Father’s plan for families, He will be with us, sustain us, and join us in our journey. He will never leave us alone, especially when trials come to us or to our loved ones. He will carry us, lift us up, and bring us to the promised land of a fulness of joy with Him, with His Son, Jesus Christ, and with our families—eternally.