Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Staying Up

One thing I don't like about my blog is that my obligation to blog tends to keep me up at night. We've been counseled to go to bed early and rise early, and I really do want to adopt that kind of sleep pattern, but I've made a sacred promise to blog every day, so I can't go to bed until I blog about something. And if I don't have anything on my mind that I want to blog about, I end up staying up late, trying to think of something to blog about, and have the time, the blog post ends up being really lame.

I think I should rethink my blogging. Either I need to do more to come up with blogworthy ideas during the day, or I need to release myself from the commitment to blog every day, because forcing me to stay up late every night is obviously not what God had in mind when He had me commit to blogging every day. But on the subject of "staying up"...

The other day, at school, I ran into a classmate from a previous semester. He asked me if I knew how to get a hold of our previous teacher, and, as a staggering coincidence, I was just about to gain that information. I asked my former classmate to meet me at a given time and place, and there and then I'd be able to give him the information he sought.

The meet-up point was in the hallway on the second story of the building we were in, and the meet-up time was 1:20, and hour and a half after our first conversation took place. This was also the location of our previous conversation, so I thought that the meet-up point was going to be pretty convenient for my former classmate.

Apparently, I was wrong. The agreed-upon time came, and my former classmate wasn't there. I waited ten minutes, but my classmate still hadn't come. I wanted to go about my business, but I felt impressed to stay up there in that second-story hallway anyway. As it turned out, my former classmate never came. However, as I was waiting, I saw a person in a wheelchair who was asking for directions to a particular classroom. Offering to help the person, I learned that the classroom they were looking for was in another building, whose location I knew well.

I led the wheelchair-bound stranger to the elevator (which I had only just then learned where it was), and took them to the desired building, and then to the desired room. If I had felt a little bit badly about having not been able to help my former classmate, I felt a little better after having been able to help someone else, and that was made possible by having follow the impression to keep waiting up in the second-story hallway.

The moral of the story is that God knows where you're needed and what He wants you to do for Him. If you follow the Spirit's promptings and look for opportunities to help, He'll give you some. His plans may not always include what you had in mind, but they'll always work out to something good.

And right now, "something good" is being able to go to bed.

1 comment:

motherof8 said...

My 2 cents? When you started blogging, you blogged in the morning. I think you should go back to making it one of the very first things you do. I know it takes time. You might have to get up a few minutes earlier. But your morning blogs were, frankly, a bit better than your late night blogs. IMHO. I think there is something about putting your mind to spiritual things at the beginning of the day - as a missionary you studied before you went out, and early morning seminary. Try to follow prophet counsel to go to bed early and arise early - despite it being contrary to the world and even family and friends, some of whom will mock. Exceptions can be allowed, but as a rule... You can give yourself notes if you have a blogging idea and are afraid you will forget.
Or you could do both. ;)