Editor’s note: “The Spoken Word” is shared by Derrick Porter each Sunday during the weekly Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square broadcast. This will be given Sunday, June 22, 2025. This week is No. 4,997 of the broadcast.
Three weeks from today, “Music & the Spoken Word” will celebrate its 5,000th week of continuous network broadcasting. Over the last 96 years, “Music & the Spoken Word” has delivered inspirational music and messages to people throughout the world.
From radio and newspaper to television and digital streaming platforms, the music and messages of the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square have touched millions of lives. The first broadcast aired in July of 1929, just one month before the start of the Great Depression, and broadcasts have continued each week, uninterrupted, through World War II, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 attacks snd even the COVID-19 pandemic.
In many ways, “Music & the Spoken Word” is a living witness to those challenging times. But it’s also a witness to the incalculable goodness and love that God continually shares with us, His children. Paul the apostle said, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, … nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, … shall be able to separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8:38–39).
There is nothing that can separate us from the love and concern of God. We are, as the scriptures say, “covered … in the shadow of [His] hand” (Isaiah 51:16) and guided near “the springs of water” (Isaiah 49:10). Part of our purpose on earth is to learn to find joy (see 2 Nephi 2:25). And as we look to God and plead for His power to bless us, we can find joy in every circumstance — even the difficult ones (see “Joy and Spiritual Survival,” by President Russell M. Nelson, Ensign or Liahona, November 2016, pages 81–84).
The poet Douglas Malloch wrote:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees,
The further sky, the greater length,
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and [people] good timbers grow.
(See “Good Timber” by Douglas Malloch, published in 1922, discoverpoetry.com.)
As we strive to qualify for God’s power in the journey of life, God strengthens our character and increases our courage. We draw closer to Him not in spite of our trials but because of them. May heaven be thanked for God’s steady and constant hand in each of our lives.
Tuning in …
The “Music & the Spoken Word” broadcast is available on KSL-TV, KSL News Radio 1160AM/102.7FM, KSL.com, BYUtv, BYUradio, Dish and DirecTV, SiriusXM (Ch. 143), tabernaclechoir.org, youtube.com/TheTabernacleChoir and Amazon Alexa (must enable skill). The program is aired live on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. Mountain Time on these outlets. Look up broadcast information by state and city at musicandthespokenword.com/viewers-listeners/airing-schedules.
