Boyd K. Packer | Fledgling Finches and Family Life | 2009

Like serpents that steal fledgling finches, evil influences are constantly at your door. You, however, have the tools to protect your family spiritually.
This speech was given on August 18, 2009.
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"Since I received this assignment from the First Presidency, I have read carefully the theme and pondered and prayed. I have reviewed the catalog listing more than 1,000 classes and the names of the instructors. There is a good feeling to all of it. I have come this morning to teach.
When we presided over the New England Mission, we lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Across the street lived Dr. Carl J. Friedrich, a retired Harvard professor, a world renowned scholar. We sent our boys over to clear their sidewalk of snow. That opened contact with them. When my wife’s parents came to visit at Christmas, the Friedrichs invited us over for the lighting of their Christmas tree, an old-fashioned tree with wax candles alit. It was a very beautiful experience.
While visiting one day with Dr. Friedrich, he told me of his academic degrees from European universities. He became very agitated and said it really irritated him when people asked what he was going to do with all the knowledge he had gained. He answered sharply, “Why should I have to do anything with it?”
Well, I know that you have something to do with the knowledge that you will gain in this great Education Week for yourself, for your family, and for the Church. You are learning much at this great conference.
I do not know who wrote these very meaningful lines, but I think they apply today:
Suppose that we state as a tenet of wisdom
That knowledge is not for delight of the mind,
Nor an end in itself, but a packet of treasure
To hold and employ for the good of mankind.
A torch or a candle is barren of meaning
Except it give light to men as they climb,
And theses and tomes are but impotent jumble
Unless they are tools in the building of time.
. . .
And truly our tireless and endless researches
Need yoking with man’s daily problems and strife,
For truth and beauty and virtue have value
Confirmed by their uses in practical life.1
I feel the best possible use of what you are learning at this BYU Education Week will be for your family.
The House Finches and the Serpents
The back windows of our home overlook a small flower garden and the woods which border Little Cottonwood Creek. The north side of the garden is the gable end of another part of the house. Except for a large window in the middle, this wall is thickly covered with English ivy.
Every year this ivy has been the nesting place for house finches. They are small birds dressed as drably as sparrows except in the springtime, when the male puts on a bright red cap and neckerchief as his costume for the serenading that he will do during the nesting season. The male house finch is one of the best soloists in the bird world. The nests in the vines are safe from the foxes and raccoons and cats that are about at night.
One day there was a great commotion in the ivy. Desperate cries of distress brought eight or 10 finches from the surrounding woods to join in this cry of alarm. I soon saw the source of the commotion. A snake slid partway down out of the ivy and hung in front of the window just long enough for me to jerk it out of the ivy and slam it against the ground. The middle part of the snake’s body had two bulges-clear evidence convicting the snake of having taken two fledglings from the nest.
Not in the 50 years that we have lived in our home had we seen anything like that before. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience-or so we thought.
A few days later there was another commotion, this time in the vines covering our dog run-we heard the same cries of panic and saw the same gathering of the neighborhood finches. Now we knew what the predator was. A grandson climbed onto the run and pulled out another snake that was still holding on tightly to the mother bird it had caught on the nest and killed.
I said to myself, “What is going on? Is Eden being invaded again?”
We do not destroy the snakes every time we see them, for they help to control insects and rodents. But we had learned a lesson this time.
For years I had thought the vines were perfectly safe for the birds, but the lesson was much too obvious-too clearly obvious. I reflected upon Adam and Eve and the serpent..."

[@markmiword4662]

We all miss Elder Parker. What marvelous words he gives here and it is every bit applicable today.

[@CML95018]

❤🙏

[@guardianangel9517]

The devil comes from EVERY direction, from under EVERY hiding place, from around EVERY corner, at EVERY second of the day or night. This I've learned the HARD way. Be ON your spiritual toes ALWAYS! Heavenly Father is standing by, waiting to help💜