What is important?

This is an easy question to answer.  There are only two things of supreme importance in the universe.  Everything else is merely interesting, and is collateral to the other two.  One is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the other is family.  The two are inseparably connected by covenants.

The purpose of the whole gospel plan is to make families eternal.  Everything that we do in the Church, in every calling, has one basic, ultimate objective:  That is to point individuals toward the temple and its crowning ordinances—sealings.

I’m grateful for my covenants. My baptismal covenant opened the way for me to make priesthood covenants.  My priesthood covenants opened the doors of the temple.  It was in the temple that my wonderful, precious wife was sealed to me for all eternity.  To that covenant relationship have come the 10 best friends and best people that I’ve known.  They’re marrying their equals, and are giving me in-law children that I love like the original 10.  As of this writing these children have given me 14 grandchildren that bring me unspeakable joy.  That number will quadruple in the foreseeable future.  So will my joy.  And all this is because of covenants.  Each of these marriages and births has, thankfully, taken place within the bonds of eternal covenants.

This means that our family’s interconnected roots will never be broken.  Winds may buffet the individual trees.  Droughts may stress us all while we remain in mortality, but nothing except our own disobedience can break this eternal, covenant relationship.  We spend our lifetimes accumulating things.  When we die, we leave behind all of our physical accumulations.  Someone once asked how much a certain rich man left when he died.  The answer was, “All of it.”

There are certain things that we can take with us, however.  One is the character we have developed.  Two is our testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Three is the knowledge that we’ve gained here in mortality.  (D&C 130:18-19)  A fourth and a fifth thing we’ll eventually get back again.  Those are our bodies, and our families that have been sealed to us.  A sixth thing that men will retain is their priesthood.  I have long maintained that my most important possessions are my testimony, my priesthood, and my family.

I have had the privilege of ordaining all of my sons to their various offices in the priesthood.  I’ve always been amazed at my Priesthood Line of Authority, and at how few steps there are between me and the Source.  It’s a traceable line.  Since my Priesthood Line of Authority is also that of my sons, I reproduce it here so that they’ll always have it.  I recommend that they would make copies; and that when they ordain another person, they would enter that man’s name and date at the top of the list, and hand him his new Priesthood line of Authority.