Videos

February 13, 2022- #4822 Music & the Spoken Word

The Music & the Spoken Word broadcast airs live via TV, radio, and internet stream on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. mountain time. For information on other airtimes, visit “Airing Schedules” at musicandthespokenword.org. 

This encore performance of Music & the Spoken Word has been specially selected for airing while live broadcasts of the Choir and Orchestra are briefly paused. It contains a new Spoken Word written and delivered by Lloyd Newell.

Music

Conductors: Mack Wilberg and Ryan Murphy
Organist: Andrew Unsworth
Narrator: Lloyd Newell

“Saints Bound for Heaven”1
Music and Lyrics: American folk song
Arrangement: Mack Wilberg

“Look at the World”
Music and Lyrics: John Rutter

“All Things Bright and Beautiful” organ solo
Music: English melody
Arrangement: Dale Wood

“Lift Up Your Heads”2 from Messiah
Music: George Frideric Handel
Lyrics: Psalm 24:7-10

“His Voice as the Sound”1
Music and Lyrics: American folk song
Arrangement: Mack Wilberg

“Love One Another”3
Music and Lyrics: Luacine Clark Fox
Arrangement: Mack Wilberg

“On Great Lone Hills”
Music: Jean Sibelius
Lyrics: Amy Sherman Bridgman
Arrangement: H. Alexander Matthews

  1. On the CD Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
  2. On the CDs Messiah - Complete Oratorio and Messiah - Highlights.
  3. One the CD Teach Me To Walk In The Light.

The Spoken Word

No Tinge of Regret

For many people, life is filled with busyness. There’s nothing inherently wrong, of course, with being busy. But it’s also not inherently a virtue—especially when the pursuits that keep us so busy do not reflect our deepest values. Religious leader Thomas S. Monson once said: “Were we to step back … and take a good look at what we’re doing, we may find that we have immersed ourselves in the ‘thick of thin things’…Too often we spend most of our time taking care of the things which do not really matter much at all in the grand scheme of things, neglecting those more important causes.”1

We’ve all mistaken the meaningless for the meaningful from time to time. Some things that seem so urgent turn out, in retrospect, to be mere distractions. How do we know the difference between what matters and what doesn’t? There isn’t one right answer, but a little poem by an anonymous poet suggests some wise guidance:

I have wept in the night
For the shortness of sight
That to somebody’s need made me blind;
But I never have yet
Felt a tinge of regret
For being a little too kind.2

Kindness is always the right thing to do; kind is always the right way to be. So many around us need our encouragement and support, our care and kindness. So many carry burdens that are unseen—not because they are hidden, but because we aren’t looking. Kindness lets people know they are seen, they do matter. That may not remove their burden, but it can definitely give them the courage and strength to keep trying. That’s what you’re doing when you act on a kind thought. And the world can’t get too much kindness.

When we look back on the choices we’ve made—at the end of the day and at the end our lives—we’ll surely notice times when we were not at our best, words we wish we could take back, situations we wish we would have handled better. We can’t rewrite the past, but the future is still unwritten. It’s not to late to err on the side of kindness, because one thing is certain: we will never feel “a tinge of regret for being a little too kind.”

  1. Thomas S. Monson, “What Have I Done for Someone Today?,"Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2009, 85.
  2. In Richard L. Evans, “The Quality of Kindness,” Improvement Era, May 1960, 340; also in Thomas S. Monson, “What Have I Done for Someone Today?,” 85–86.