I look out my kitchen window at Amy Geese, the Canada goose that nests in my nesting box.  She and her mate come to our pond every year.  She lays a clutch of six eggs, and dutifully sets on them for 30-35 days.  Once a day she carefully covers her precious eggs with the hay that I've put in the nest and the down that she has plucked from her own body, and briefly leaves the nest to get a drink and a quick bite to eat.  Then it's back to the nest where she patiently sits for day after boring day.  Why does she do it?

Shawn Geese, her mate, patiently waits on the pond.  He is ever alert to any dangers that might threaten Amy and their babies.  If a crow flies over, he sounds off threateningly, and immediately takes to the air to chase the intruder away.  He knows that crows are nest robbers.  Even other geese, if not family members, are not welcome on the pond near his mate and her nest.

It is spring, and nothing is more important to Amy and Shawn than raising a family.  No sacrifice is too great.  They are focused on fulfilling the divine mandate given to all of God's creatures to multiply and replenish the earth.

Every species of birds, animals, reptiles, fish, trees, flowers, insects, and every other living thing is focused on the commandment to multiply.  Every single species in the world understands and obeys this dictate except certain humans.  Every other species knows that joy is to be found in posterity.  Only humans turn the opportunity for joy down.

I have studied Amy and Shawn Geese and their descendants for several decades.  Shawn Geese chases all other geese and other intruders away from their pond except family members.  I'm quite sure that he recognizes his children from other years.  If someone was to make a study of geese I think that they'd find that the flock of geese that they see is a family.  I observed 17 geese on the pond one spring, and Shawn permitted them to be there.  They must have been family.  They enjoy one another's company.  I think they stay together all year except when they pair off in the spring to raise a family of their own.

Humans are strange creatures.  They think that happiness is to be found in the absence of responsibility.  Responsibility brings stress.  Children mean responsibility and stress.  Some humans prevent childbirth and go so far as to kill the babies that they've conceived in order to avoid the responsibilities and stress that children cause.

Does any other species kill their own babies?  I am aghast at the thought.

Such humans are supremely stupid.  They turn their backs on the opportunity to experience joy.  They have allowed the adversary of us all to whisper in their ears that being separate and single like him is the preferred state.  It is a lie, and such choices will be regretted.

The Creator and Savior of mankind instructed them to multiply and to replenish the earth that they might have joy in their posterity.  True joy is to be found in no place other than in the presence of God and family.

How pleased will the purposely-childless person and the Savior be to see one another when he stands before Him to be judged?  The wise have kept His commandments, and will be ushered into an eternity of joy with their posterity.  They will become kings and queens and rulers over their own creations.  It is their own posterity that will become their kingdoms.  They will have eternal increase, and a posterity as numerous as the stars in the sky, or the sands upon the seashore.

Those who sought a life of ease, void of family and responsibility, will live “separately and singly,without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity” because they desired it.  (D&C 132:17).