Last Saturday J and I had planned to hitch a ride out to Gallatin for the evening. There, we would have dinner and a brief meeting with the Sister Missionaries there, look through their area book, and go out on exchanges with them.
Seldom do things go as planned.
As time came for us to leave, I kept getting this feeling in my stomach that we should not go up to Gallatin. "This is ridiculous," I thought. "The sisters are already preparing dinner, and we've already planned to go!"
Thinking that my own judgements were better than a gut feeling, we went ahead with our plans. As we arrived, we were informed that there wouldn't be enough room in the car for us to go out with the Sisters. We scrambled to find a ride back to Nashville, but by then it was too late. So, there we were, stuck in Gallatin.
As missionaries, we are suppose to be inside our homes by 9:00 every evening. We were still up in Gallatin, and it was past 10:00. We called our leaders and they had told us to just call them when we got home. "No!" I thought, "You're suppose to be angry with us!" I felt so guilty for not listening to the spirit! Not only were we stuck in an umfamiliar city, but we had nothing to do.
We had wasted our entire evening...
Finally, our phone rang. Our ride had come! We hopped in the car, and headed towards home. Around 11:15 we hit traffic. TRAFFIC!! At 11:15 pm!
On one of the freeway off-ramps there was an accident. J said, "Maybe if we had left and been on time, we would've been in that accident." Maybe she's right. Maybe, because I didn't listen to the Lord the first time, that He made us late so that we would get home safetly.
There's no way to really tell.
But I learned a valuable lesson about listening to the Spirit.
"My first radio was a crystal set. It was hard to tune to the frequency of a particular radio station. I had to scratch the receiving wire whisker over the top of the rough crystal to find the right pinpoint, a little valley on the crystal where the signal was received. Just a millimeter off on either side of that point and I would lose the signal and get scratchy static.
"Over time, with patience and perseverance, good eyesight, and a steady hand, I learned to find the signal point on the crystal without too much difficulty.
"So it is with inspiration. We must attune ourselves to the inspiration
from God and tune out the scratchy static. We have to work at being tuned in.
"Most of us need a long time to become
tuned in."
(former member of the First Presidency)
We may have only been a millimeter off on either side of listening to the spirit that night.
But it had costs us hours of delay and a waste of precious time.
