Enjoy!!
Love, Love, Love!
Dating and Marriage Series
Arianne B. Cope, “The Eight-Cow Ring,” New Era, Oct. 2004, 37
“And the Greatest of These Is Love”, Gordon B. Hinckley
Jeffrey R. Holland:
Husbands, you have been entrusted with the most sacred gift God can give you—a wife, a daughter of God, the mother of your children who has voluntarily given herself to you for love and joyful companionship. Think of the kind things you said when you were courting, think of the blessings you have given with hands placed lovingly upon her head, think of yourself and of her as the god and goddess you both inherently are
JRH, Ensign May 2007
Marvin J. Ashton:
After a night of intense pain and suffering, one morning a husband stricken with a terminal illness said to his wife with great feeling, “I am so thankful today.” “For what?” she asked, knowing well his difficult and trying situation. He replied, “For God giving me the privilege of one more day with you.”
Marvin J. Ashton, “A Voice of Gladness,” Ensign, May 1991, 18
Boyd K. Packer:
And if you suppose that the full-blown rapture of young romantic love is the sum of the possibilities which spring from the fountains of life, you have not yet lived to see the devotion and the comfort of longtime married love. Married couples are tried by temptation, misunderstandings, separation, financial problems, family crises, illness; and all the while love grows stronger, the mature love enjoys a bliss not even imagined by newlyweds.
Participation in the mating process offers an experience like nothing else in life. When entered into worthily, it combines the most exquisite and exalted physical, emotional, and spiritual feelings associated with the word love. Those feelings and the lifelong need for one another bind a husband and wife together in a marriage wherein all of the attributes of adult masculinity are complemented by the priceless feminine virtues of womanhood.
That part of life has no equal, no counterpart, in all human experience. It will, when covenants are made and kept, last eternally, “For therein are the keys of the holy priesthood ordained, that you may receive honor and glory” (D&C 124:34), “which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever” (D&C 132:19).
But romantic love is incomplete; it is a prelude. Love is nourished by the coming of children, who spring from that fountain of life entrusted to couples in marriage.
“The Fountain of Life,” Eternal Marriage Institute Student Manual.
Ezra Taft Benson:
Had Abraham loved Isaac more than God, would he have consented? As the Lord indicates in the Doctrine and Covenants, both Abraham and Isaac now sit as gods (see D&C 132:37). They were willing to offer or to be offered up as God required. They have a deeper love and respect for each other because both were willing to put God first.
(Ezra Taft Benson, “The Great Commandment Love the Lord,” Ensign, May 1988, 4, emphasis added)
Once a man received as his inheritance two keys. The first key, he was told, would open a vault which he must protect at all cost. The second key was to a safe within the vault which contained a priceless treasure. He was to open this safe and freely use the precious things which were stored therein. He was warned that many would seek to rob him of his inheritance. He was promised that if he used the treasure worthily, it would be replenished and never be diminished, not in all eternity. He would be tested. If he used it to benefit others, his own blessings and joy would increase.The man went alone to the vault. His first key opened the door. He tried to unlock the treasure with the other key, but he could not, for there were two locks on the safe. His key alone would not open it. No matter how he tried, he could not open it. He was puzzled. He had been given the keys. He knew the treasure was rightfully his. He had obeyed instructions, but he could not open the safe.
