Life is full of noble causes and worthy goals. Because one cannot pursue all of them, it helps to remember that simply opening our hearts in love and kindness to others is what makes all the difference. It’s the primary pathway to healing, to happiness, to health.
Harvard biologist and Nobel Prize winner George Wald once wrote: “What one really needs is not Nobel laureates but love. How do you think one gets to be a Nobel laureate? Wanting love, that’s how. Wanting it so bad one works all the time and ends up a Nobel laureate. It’s a consolation prize. What matters is love.”1
All throughout life and at the end of our days, what will be remembered about us is the love we’ve shown, the kindness and concern we’ve extended to others. Instead of spending so much time on things that don’t really matter all that much, why not spend effort on things of greatest worth—things of the heart.
Years ago, a leader of a small religious congregation determined to write a monthly letter to each member of his flock who was serving overseas in the military. After several months, a woman who helped him prepare the letters asked, “Don’t you ever get discouraged? . . . This is the seventeenth consecutive monthly letter you have sent to Lawrence Bryson [without] a reply.”
“Well,” he answered, “send number seventeen. It might do the job.”2
It did. A reply came from a homesick young man who reported that the monthly letters were helping him through his difficulties and inspiring him to take courage.
Such simple and steady acts of kindness are the essence of love, the substance of life. All of us need love; all of us want love. Everything else is a consolation prize. What matters is love.
1 In Dean Ornish, Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy (1998), 96.
2 See Thomas S. Monson, in Conference Report, Apr. 1993, 64–65; or Ensign, May 1993, 50.
Program #4270
Musical Selection:
1. Antiphon
Ralph Vaughn Williams; EC Schirmer
2. Consider the Lilies of the Field
Roger Hoffman; arr. A. Laurence Lyon; Sonos
3. Prince of Denmark’s March (Organ solo)
Jeremiah Clark; Mercury Music
4. Softly and Tenderly
Will L. Thompson; arr. Mack Wilberg; Arrangement Unpublished
5. Spoken Word
6. Fill the World with Love, from Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Leslie Bricusse; arr. Mack Wilberg; Arrangement Unpublished
Music & the Spoken Word
A program of inspirational music and spoken word.