Most of the world’s best work is done by teams. Whether at school, in the office, on the stage, or on the ballfield, the most effective teams deliver the best performances. Learning how to succeed means learning how to work together. And life provides so many great opportunities.
We are born into families—our first team, which at its best offers support, guidance, and love. We attend school in classes, teams of sorts, where we learn alongside classmates and play a role in each other’s success. We enter the workforce and realize that we have limitations, but our coworkers have strengths that compensate, just as our strengths can complement others’ weaknesses. And in an even broader sense, we are all part of the same human family—learning together, working together on the same team.
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., in an address at Oberlin College, wisely said it this way: “All life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. … I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”[1]
In other words, we need each other. Even the most skilled individuals can’t match what happens when a team of people with different skills caringly collaborates. Anciently, the Apostle Paul compared our varied gifts to the different parts of the human body. We do best when all the different parts are working in harmony.[2] Paul’s wisdom has great application to every person and every team: “There should be no [division] in the body; but … the members should have the same care one for another. And [if] one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Corinthians 12:25–26).
Imagine what our world would be like if we had “the same care one for another,” if we saw each other as members of the same team. To paraphrase Dr. King’s words from another well-known speech, it would be a dream come true.
[1] Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution,” commencement address at Oberlin College, June 1965, oberlin.edu.
[2] See 1 Corinthians 12:14–20.
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January 15, 2023
Broadcast Number 4,870
The Tabernacle Choir
Orchestra at Temple Square
Conductors
Mack Wilberg
Ryan Murphy
Organist
Richard Elliott
Host
Lloyd Newell
Scatter Sunshine
Edwin O. Excell; Arr. Ryan Murphy
Hear Him
Ryan Murphy
The Rejoicing, from Music for the Royal Fireworks
George Frideric Handel; Arr. Richard Elliott
There Is Sunshine in My Soul Today
John R. Sweney; Arr. Mack Wilberg
This Little Light of Mine
African-American spiritual; Arr. Mack Wilberg
Arise, O God, and Shine
John Darwall; Arr. Mack Wilberg