Ive been a wife and a mother
17:15 19:19) he commanded his people to pray “unto the Father, always in my name” (3 Ne. 13:9) he himself always prayed to the Father (Matt. 7 In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus instructed, “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven” (Matt. None of us can add to or diminish the glory of her of whom we have no revealed knowledge.” 6 President Hinckley explained in the same address that, because of the Savior’s instructions and example, one does not pray to Heavenly Mother. The fact that we do not pray to our Mother in Heaven in no way belittles or denigrates her. . . He taught: “Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. Hinckley (Counselor in the First Presidency, November 10, 1985–March 3, 1995) addressed at length the topic of a Mother in Heaven during the 1991 general Relief Society meeting. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” 5įour years earlier, President Gordon B. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. In 1909, the First Presidency of the Church wrote: “All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.” 4 In 1995, the Church officially reaffirmed the doctrine of a Heavenly Mother in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”: “All human beings-male and female-are created in the image of God. Still, we feel it is appropriate to look carefully at all that has (and has not) been said about Mother in Heaven over the past 165 years, in order to promote clarity in academic discussions in particular and to avert possible confusion, misunderstanding, or contention in general.
This doctrine may well be among those that Joseph Smith anticipated, in which God would someday “reveal many great and important things” (A of F 9). Since the 1840s, this cherished doctrine has been an important, although relatively obscure, part of the Latter-day Saint understanding of the premortal origins and divine nature of mankind. Written and published within months of Joseph Smith’s death, these and other lines give considerable evidence that the Prophet taught of a Mother in Heaven, even if he did so only implicitly 2 or restrictively to certain limited audiences. Snow (who would later serve as the Relief Society general president from December 18, 1867–December 5, 1887), these lines from our beloved hymn “O My Father” are perhaps the best-known reference in Latter-day Saint literature to a Mother in Heaven.