Welcome to the Classic Speaches Podcasts presented by BYU Speaches, bringing you treasured talks from 70 years of BYU Devotionals.

Be sure to check out our other podcasts by searching BYU Speaches wherever you get your podcasts, or by visitingspeches.BYU.edu slash podcasts.

This devotional address entitled,

Challenges for the Year ahead,

was given on September 6th of 1973

by Dallin H. Oaks,

then president of Brigham Young University.

My dear brothers and sisters,

I stand before you in great humility for the responsibility

of addressing you on this occasion. I see your faces, thousands of them. I also see other faces,

parents, alumni, tithe payers, church leaders, the great and the humble

friends of this university, and teachers and leaders of times past, all who have contributed

to the great traditions of this university. These faces look to me to be their spokesman

on this occasion.

No one could face that challenge without humility.

The last time I stood up in assembly to give a comprehensive challenge to this student body

was two years ago, just a few weeks after I had taken office.

It is time to do so again.

Your faces are new.

Only 4,000 of you were students at BYU when I gave that first talk two years ago.

Twenty-one thousand of you were not here on that occasion.

That fact impresses me to repeat a few things I said before.

...