Sunday Devotional - Safe in our home

One of the General Conference talks that I have come to really love was given by Elder Cree-L Kofford called, “Your Name is Safe in Our Home.”  In this talk, he describes the concept of keeping a person’s name “safe” at home. He says:

“What a blessing it would be if all of us could follow that counsel, if each of our names truly could be safe in the home of others. Have you noticed how easy it is to cross over the line and find fault with other people? All too often we seek to be excused from the very behavior we condemn in others. Mercy for me, justice for everyone else is a much too common addiction. When we deal with the name and reputation of another, we deal with something sacred in the sight of the Lord.

There are those among us who would recoil in horror at the thought of stealing another person’s money or property but who don’t give a second thought to stealing another person’s good name or reputation.

The old adage “Never judge another man until you have walked a mile in his footsteps” is as good advice today as it was the day it was first uttered. Someone once said,

“There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us,
That it ill behooves any of us
To find fault with the rest of us.”

The first place to start to make a child’s, a parent’s, a sister’s, a brother’s, or a grandparent’s name safe is in our own homes. If we watch how we discuss others at home, even those who may not live within the walls of the home, that we are showing our family members that home is a place where we value and respect others in our Heavenly Family."

May we all strive to make the names of others "safe" in our homes.