From the preface of ‘Covenant Hearts’—Marriage and the Joy of Human Love’ ~ Bruce C. Hafen:
For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth and friends above,
For all gentle thoughts and mild,
Lord of all’ to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.
The joy of human love gives us hope and purpose. It makes us want to live better. It makes us long for the day when we will take the hands that have held ours and enter our Father’s presence together. There we will embrace not only Him but also our husbands, our wives, our children, family, and friends. There we will stay with them, always, to “go no more out” (Revelation 3:12).
We can sense a glimpse of that day when we taste love’s deepest stirrings and God’s Spirit brushes across our hearts. The promise of living together in love, both here and beyond time is worth waiting for, worth trying and crying for through all the days of life. No wonder we praise the Lord for all this highest beauty of both earth and heaven.
The fountainhead of human love flows from a marriage between hearts knit together by covenants. When those headwaters run pure, children and grandchildren will later sing their own hymns of grateful praise. “For the love from which our hearts birth, / over and around us lies.” 2
Because I know these promises are true, I have watched with growing sadness over the last generation as our society has gradually but surely begun to replace an imperfect but relatively stable “culture of marriage” with a disturbing new ‘culture of divorce.” This is not just an American problem. As President Gordon B. Hinckley has said, “The family is falling apart. Not only in America, but now across the world.”3 On another occasion, he said the number of people hurt by crumbling families is a matter of serious concern. I think it is my most serious concern.”
Reflecting on his concern, in 1995, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles issued the ‘Proclamation on the Family’. In a day when “people are confused” about life’s most important relationships, we need to hear the rest of that Primary song: “Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, / follow the prophet: he knows the way.” The Family Proclamation helps restore the perspective the world is losing. The doctrine and principles expressed in that Proclamation for what this book tries to say about marriage. see ‘The Family: A Proclamation to the World’
