Editor’s note: “The Spoken Word” is shared by Derrick Porter each Sunday during the weekly Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square broadcast. This will be given Sunday, July 21, 2024. This was originally presented by Lloyd Newell on Oct. 5, 2014.
In Proverbs, we read the admonition “Ponder the path of thy feet” (Proverbs 4:26). Often our feet move so quickly from one important task to another that thoughtfully pondering our path can seem unrealistic — or even like a waste of time.
But we all need some time for private reflection and introspection; without it, we lose perspective and focus in our lives. Without some occasional deep thinking about our values and our place in the universe, we lack direction and a sense of purpose. Pondering gives us an opportunity to sort things out, to set aside the unimportant and seek a connection with something eternal — even with God Himself. Indeed, the most meaningful pondering includes prayer, which Ralph Waldo Emerson defined as “the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view” (“The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson,” edited by Brooks Atkinson, published in 2009).
A son remembers watching his father, a gifted speaker and writer, sit on a rock wall near his home for what seemed like hours — ”thinking, meditating, pondering things that he would say and write. … Life was for him a great adventure in thinking,” he recalled.
The son never forgot that lesson, and when he became a noted leader, speaker and writer in his own right, he encouraged people to “go out into the dark of the night, look at the stars and ponder their place in the eternal plan of the Almighty” — to do as the psalmist did and “consider [the] heavens, the work of [God’s] fingers, the moon and the stars, which [He has] ordained,” and ask, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:3-4) (“Life’s Obligations,” by President Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, Feb. 1999).
Pondering is spiritual and mental exercise that elevates our thoughts from the trivial to the vital, from the mundane to the divine. Then when the time comes, as it always does, to return to our daily tasks, we do so with renewed focus, purpose and energy. And we find that our brief, sacred moment of deep and humble pondering was indeed time well spent.
Tuning in …
The “Music & the Spoken Word” broadcast is available on KSL-TV, KSL News Radio 1160AM/102.7FM, KSL.com, BYUtv, BYUradio, Dish and DirecTV, SiriusXM (Ch. 143), tabernaclechoir.org, youtube.com/TheTabernacleChoir and Amazon Alexa (must enable skill). The program is aired live on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. Mountain Time on these outlets. Look up broadcast information by state and city at musicandthespokenword.com/viewers-listeners/airing-schedules.
