SEPTEMBER 21, 2025
A HOUSE OF PRAYER, PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING
MACK WILBERG AND RYAN MURPHY
Conductors
BRIAN MATHIAS
Organist
DERRICK PORTER
The Spoken Word
PRAISE, MY SOUL, THE KING OF HEAVEN
Music: Ryan Murphy
Text: Henry F. Lyte
I FEEL MY SAVIOR’S LOVE
Music: K. Newell Dayley
Text: Ralph Rodgers Jr., K. Newell Dayley, and Laurie Huffman
Arrangement: Sam Cardon
FANFARE (ORGAN SOLO)
Music: Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens
HOMEWARD BOUND
Music and Text: Marta Keen Thompson
Arrangement: Mack Wilberg
NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD
Music: Johann Crüger
Text: Martin Rinkhart;
trans. Catherine Winkworth
Arrangement: Mack Wilberg
THE SPOKEN WORD
“A House of Prayer, Praise, Thanksgiving”
WE LOVE THY HOUSE, O GOD
Music: Leroy J. Robertson
Text: William Bullock
HYMN OF PRAISE
Music: Mack Wilberg
Text: David Warner
A HOUSE OF PRAYER, PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING
The Spoken Word, September 21, 2025
By: Derrick Porter
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.
References
1. See “The New Tabernacle Dedicatory Prayer,” Deseret News, Oct. 20, 1975, 594.2. “Helen Keller Stirs Vast S. L. Audience,” Salt Lake Tribune, Mar. 13, 1941, 17, newspapers.com.