One of my passions is astronomy. When I go out in my backyard and look through my telescope at my friends, the planets and stars, I feel so close to God. Not because heaven is in space, but because it is so obvious there is organization in all things. He is a God of order; with everything in it’s perfect place. Everything has a purpose; a mission. Since He is order in all we see it only makes sense that people should live by order too.
Just like laws and principles govern the skies and the earth, there are laws meant to govern us as well. That is why we have chosen to apply governing rules to our home too. We feel like there is no better example of how to run a home than the way God runs our world; the current home for His family.
Our family has a set structure. We have certain meetings each week to strengthen the family relationships and keep the home in order. The meetings we have are Couple’s Meetings, Family meetings, Family Home evenings, and Mentor Sessions. These meetings all happen on the same day withing a period of a few hours. Taking those few hours for the family each week helps our home keep the Spirit of love and harmony in it. That feeling in the home is the most important thing.
Of course we also believe in having a certain way of parenting and teaching certain skills our children need to learn to be productive, happy people in the world. The skills are: Following instructions, Accepting “No” answers or Criticism, Accepting Consequences, and Disagreeing Appropriately. These are essential skills for happiness and success in life. People who can’t disagree appropriately are never happy.
Yes, order is good. God has order and wants us to have it too. We can choose to apply the principle of order any way we want, but I believe that a house of order is more than just a clean house (although that’s not a bad idea either). A house of order is knowing God is over parents and parents are over children. And that all are then subject to God. An orderly house is also a house which can keep the Spirit of love present by living in an orderly way. I am not saying our family is perfect at all of this yet, but this is the goal for our family. Order makes everyone comfortable and happy.
For more on our home order visit my site http://teachingselfgovernment.com
Couldn’t agree more. Everytime I think about my house becoming chaotic, I hearken back to D&C 93:44, in which the Lord says to Frederick G. Williams, “set in order your own house, for there are many things that are not right in your house.” It seems that we all should learn something from that.
In terms of order, I think about people doing what they should be doing, family prayer, family home evening, going to Church together and also of course teaching good values to your children. And having a clean and orderly house probably plays in there somewhere.
Order is part of the gospel, church, and space. It makes sense.
“We feel like there is no better example of how to run a home than the way God runs our world; the current home for His family. ”
How do you explain earthquakes, hurricanes, birth defects?
Naismith, my prediction is that with the prespective of the eternities, you will see order in all of the current chaos. Just because we have limited vision now does not mean that we will always be unable to see the bigger picture, as Heavenly Father does.
Chaos is my nemesis. THose that know me will die laughing, me imparting any kind of advice on this topic. You are right Nicoleen, communication is important. We have family meetings too. They are not so much planned out as on a need to have basis. A big help in keeping a house neat is having space to put things in. We finished our basement recently. We now have a mud room with cubbies. No more shoes and backpacks piled by the front door. SO much better! We have a rec room for the kids. All the toys and art station is now out of sight out of mind. Now if I could just get rid of the kitchen and laundry. 🙂
JA it sounds like I could take some lessons from you about getting the clutter out of the closets and off of the dressers. I am better and spiritual and emotional family order than at keeping the house looking nice. I really don’t know how I made it all the way through 10 days with a camera crew at my house without having the house become it’s usual mess. I was really worried the camera crew would spy some of my untidy areas. 🙂
I am also really impressed that you have family meetings. When I was young our family meetings always turned into family fights. Soon we stopped having them. I was so happy to find a new way to have a family meeting so that it can’t turn into a family fight. It was revolutionary to me, and really has changed our home forever.
I’m sure people knew what Nicholeen intended, but the way she punctuated this sentence:
she created a list of three equal things that she looks at through her telescope:
A) her friends,
B) the planets,
C) stars.
My apologies to anyone who misread my joke in my first comment on this thread. Nicholeen sent me a nice email explaining that she finally got the joke about an hour after she deleted the comment because she first thought it was snarky of me accusing her of looking at her friends through a telescope.
Do we have any English teachers or editors who can render that correctly?
I might render it:
When I go out in my backyard and look through my telescope at my friends: the planets and stars, I feel so close to God.
Or:
When I go out in my backyard and look through my telescope at my friends (the planets and stars) I feel so close to God.
Grammar cop out.
Well said! Thank you! 🙂