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, Jan. 18, 2026. This week is No. 5,027 of the broadcast.
Sixteen hundred years ago, St. Augustine pondered a timeless question: How do we decide whom we are to aid? He wrote, “Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special [attention] to those who, by the accidents of time or place or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you” (see “On Christian Doctrine, in Four Books,” by St. Augustine, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, p. 39, ccel.org/ccel/a/augustine/doctrine/cache/doctrine.pdf).
His counsel remains just as relevant today. Each of us has opportunity — even responsibility — to pay special attention to those who are brought into connection with us.
Connection is a word we hear often today. Yet even as technology links the world more closely than ever, nothing can replace the value of one human being noticing and doing good for another.
In many ways, a human being is like a flower. When a flower receives the right amount of light, air and nutrients, it opens and blossoms, revealing its beauty. But without those favorable elements, it closes its petals to protect itself, hiding its natural beauty. Likewise, we each need the light, air and nutrients of human love, friendship, acceptance and belonging — nutrients that allow us to open, to flourish and to fully blossom.
One way we receive these nutrients, these warm feelings in our hearts, is by offering them to others. The New Testament reads: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:16-18).
May we each, as a beloved hymn pleads, “be [our] brother’s keeper.” May we show “gentle heart[s]” to those whose “sorrow[s]” our “eye[s] can’t see” — to the “wounded,” to the “weary” (see “Lord, I Would Follow Thee,” “Hymns,” no. 220).
May we do our part to help the Light of Jesus Christ shine brightly for others, healing and helping the human flowers in the fields of life surrounding us to blossom. As we do so, we will find the light of His love growing within us. For Jesus Christ is a light that is endless, a light that can never be darkened (see Mosiah 16:9).
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.
