Boyd K. Packer

Our Father's plan requires that, like the generation of life itself, the shield of faith is to be made and fitted in the family.  No two can be exactly alike.  Each must be handcrafted to individual specifications.  The plan designed by the Father contemplates that man and woman, husband and wife, working together, fit each child individually with a shield of faith made to buckle on so firmly that it can neither be pulled off nor penetrated by those fiery darts.  It takes the steady strength of a father to hammer out the metal of it and the tender hands of a mother to polish and fit it on.  Sometimes one parent is left to do it alone.  It is difficult, but it can be done.  In the Church we can teach about the materials from which a shield of faith is made: reverence, courage, chastity, repentance, forgiveness, compassion. In church we can learn how to assemble and fit them together.  But the actual making of and fitting on of the shield of faith belongs in the family circle.  Otherwise it may loosen and come off in a crisis... This shield of faith is not manufactured on an assembly line, only handmade in a cottage industry.  Therefore our leaders press members to understand that what is most worth doing must be done at home.  Some still do not see that too many out-of-home activities, however well intended, leave too little time to make and fit on the shield of faith at home.

Boyd K. Packer, “‘The Shield of Faith’,” Ensign, May 1995, 7