Choir Notes

Love Gives Life

From Music and The Spoken Word

Delivered by: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4305

What if we were willing to reach out in love and kindness without expecting anything in return? What if love, the universal language, inspired our words and actions?

A boy named Danny felt the power of such love when he found his mother’s best shoes caked with mud after a rainstorm. Without telling her, Danny cleaned and polished his mother’s shoes until they shined like new. Imagine how happy she was when she saw her newly polished shoes! She wanted to do something to thank her son, so she reached in her purse and gave him some money.

A short time later, when Danny’s mother put her shoes on, she felt something in the toe of one of them. She took the shoe off, reached inside, and found the money she had given Danny, wrapped in a small note that said, "Mother, I did it for love.”1 True love was the inspiration behind his kindness.

Such love gives meaning and purpose to life. The language of the people of Tahiti expresses this truth beautifully. Tahitians greet each other with the phrase ia ora na, which literally means "life to you” or "that you might live.” A visitor to Tahiti, after experiencing this greeting, observed, "We are either giving life or taking life from each other as we move forward on our way. Harsh words take life away from the one who receives them and even from the one who utters them. But words spoken in love give life.”2

The note Danny put in his mother’s shoes, like the greeting of the people of Tahiti, reminds us to strive to reach out in love, to speak with love, to do it for love. Truly, words and actions inspired by love give life.

1 See Ann Jamison, "Christmas All Year,” Friend, Dec. 2000, 11.

2 Russell T. Osguthorpe, "When Love Is Why,” BYU Magazine, fall 2011, http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=2886.