So Subtle a Prompting

Yesterday, my mom taught me that spiritual promptings don't always take the form of words, or even specific thoughts, but are sometimes positive or negative feelings. In this case, my mom had negative thoughts about her normal plan for Friday mornings, which is especially odd, because she goes to the temple most Friday mornings, and I often go with her. But this week, it just didn't feel right. However, when she thought about a certain sister in our ward, those negative feelings were replaced by positive feelings, and she took that as a sign that, this week, we were to serve someone on this side of the veil, rather than the other side.

I'm not sure I would have caught a prompting that subtle. In fact, I'm almost sure I wouldn't have. I can be pretty dense. If I had bad feelings about something, I might assume that I just had a bad attitude or that I was feeling bad about something else and was just projecting those bad feelings on whatever I was planning to do. Instead, my mom knew the difference between her personal feelings and feelings that came through promptings of the spirit. I hope that I someday become that well attuned to the Spirit, because He sometimes is that subtle.

If I had my way, spiritual promptings would be more obvious, perhaps even to the point of being unmistakable, but I'm sure there are good reasons why the Spirit isn't usually that blunt. Perhaps it's like a horse's reins. The Spirit doesn't want to jerk our heads around to literally make us face the right direction. He'd rather use a gentler hand. But for that to work, we need to be sensitive to even the softest pulls of the reins, and we need to be willing to turn our heads at even the faintest suggestion. Being that sensitive and submissive to the promptings of the Spirit takes a lot of effort, perhaps even a lifetime's worth, and I'm really impressed that my mom was able to detect, recognize, and act upon so subtle a prompting. As my mom taught me yesterday, some promptings are that subtle, and we need to be extremely well attuned to the Spirit to even notice them.