A House Of Prayer, Praise, And Thanksgiving

150 YEARS AGO, the Tabernacle here in Salt Lake City, Utah, was dedicated as a house of prayer, a house of praise, and a house of thanksgiving.1

Since that prayer in 1875, this great Tabernacle has hosted thousands of events to help people connect with the Divine. For more than a century, people have gathered inside this building, at times 10,000 strong, to hear songs of hope and messages that inspire.

One such event occurred back in 1941. The speaker that day was Helen Keller. It was unimaginable that an individual with her challenges—she was deaf and blind—could speak and interact with an audience of thousands. Helen learned to see and hear, in a sense, by using the finesse of her fingers. She learned to pronounce words that she could not hear by feeling the vibrations of another’s voice with her fingers and then mimicking those vibrations with her own vocal cords.

To the audience she described the flowers she had received and how she had seen with her hands the relics of pioneer days as she toured the state capitol. Helen then invited Utah Governor Herbert Maw to ask her any question he desired. She placed her fingers on his nose, lips, and throat, feeling the muscles and vibrations as he spoke. The question: “If you had one wish to be granted, what would it be?” Her response: “World peace and brotherhood.”

Helen shared that while she was “inexpressibly grieved by the present world conflict,” she still believed in “the power of God to eventually achieve His divine wish for ‘peace on earth, good will among men.’”2

That day, the power of God was evident as all in attendance witnessed a personal miracle many years in the making: a deaf and blind woman communicating with thousands—hearing and seeing through her fingers and declaring with spoken words her faith in God’s power.

That’s what this Tabernacle was built for—to share and to testify of the power of God! It was built to be a house of prayer, a house of praise, and a house of thanksgiving. May its voice, like

Helen Keller’s wish, carry peace and brotherhood to generations yet to come.