Our Sacred home!

I was reading the long overdue Ensign (2007) I forgot how good the Ensign is. There are so many good articles, and I felt like they all pertained to me!! But I especially liked this article!

Everyday activities in our homes offer opportunities to practice love, service, obedience, and cooperation.
For the pioneers, caring for their homes required heavy labor and protection from the harsh physical environment. Consider the story of Ann Howell Burt. She emigrated from Wales, married, and lived in a dugout in northern Utah during the summer of 1863. As a young mother she had to work hard to keep order and see to the needs of her family. She recorded in her journal:
“Some days ago, I killed a rattlesnake with my rolling pin, as he came crawling down the steps. I was just cooking supper and the baby was on the floor or rather the ground. … I was badly frightened. …
“… A few days ago, while keeping the flies off the baby’s face as he slept … , I discovered … a large tarantula crawling toward the child. I seized the broomstick, thrust the end of it at the tarantula and when it took hold … I hurriedly put it into the fire.”1
Though many of us may not have to worry about tarantulas and snakes invading our homes, we have even more dangerous influences threatening us. Our tarantulas and snakes are moral ones, and they are ever so subtle. They include disdain for household work, the difficulty of holding family mealtimes, changing roles for mothers and fathers, abortion, and the erosion of marriage through divorce, cohabitation, and same-sex marriage. It would be nice if we could beat these invaders back with household implements, but we’ve lost many of our rolling pins and broomsticks.
Declining Home Life
Today it is normal to hear young women describe their goals for the future in terms of exciting career plans. These young women most likely also desire to be wives and mothers, but today it seems more appropriate to announce career goals first. Although we value these opportunities for women, motherhood and homemaking have almost disappeared from modern society as natural and valued pathways for women.
Instead the message seems to be that if mothers have access to modern conveniences to care for their homes and families, then they should be free to seek their own fulfillment. Home is often erroneously considered a place from which women need to break free. Some ideologies would even have women think that home duties limit their full potential, and women and men are tempted to disregard the important, everyday aspects of home life—thus the loss of our rolling pins and brooms.
While modern conveniences have delivered us from some of the work of caring for a home, they have led to a decline in home life. We are tempted to disregard the value of everyday home activities like having family meals, and in the process we lose important opportunities for individual and family growth. Author Cheryl Mendelson explains: “As people turn more and more to outside institutions to have their [everyday] needs met … , [our] skills and expectations … diminish, in turn decreasing the chance that people’s homes can satisfy their needs.”2
In general conference, President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) warned: “Many of the social restraints which in the past have helped to reinforce and to shore up the family are dissolving and disappearing. The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us.”3
Protecting Our Homes and Families
How can we successfully defend our homes from this “gathering evil” and progress toward our eternal goals?
First, we need to rediscover and preserve the sacred nature of the home and its purposes. In the Bible Dictionary we read, “Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.”4 If our homes compare to the temple, what is it about the home that makes it sacred? One dictionary defines sacred as “belonging to or dedicated to God; worthy of reverence; set apart for or dedicated to some person, object, or purpose; that [which] must not be violated or disregarded; properly immune, as from violence or interference.”5
Apply this idea of sacred to everyday activities in your home such as mealtime, music, recreation, laundry, and caring for your home and yard. Mundane activities can have a higher purpose and must not be disregarded; they give us opportunities to develop and practice character virtues and ethical behavior. By doing these everyday activities, we can learn about moral truths and practice honesty, patience, charity, and brotherly kindness. Everyday work and recreation in the home provide rich contexts for children and adults to make choices and learn from them
Second, we need to make family mealtime a daily event. Today, many find it easier to graze individually in their kitchens, dine from their cars, or go to the nearest restaurant for a quick meal rather than prepare a meal and sit down together as a family.
What are we losing? Family meals have numerous beneficial effects. Evidence suggests that family meals help children have better nutrition,6 fewer psychological problems, and less risky or self-destructive behaviors.7 Family meals in a positive environment also play an important role in preventing unhealthy weight-control practices.8

I know this is long, but I just wanted to get in the important things. You can find this talk at www.lds.org and lots of other great talks!