Pondering

A few weeks ago President McKay related to the Twelve an interesting experience and I asked him yesterday if I might repeat it to you this morning. With his permission I am going to repeat it to you. He says "It is a great thing to be responsive to the whisperings of the Spirit and we know that when these whisperings come it is a gift and our privilege to have them. They come when we are relaxed and not under pressure of appointments." I want you to mark that.

The President then took occasion to relate an experience in the life of Bishop John Wells, formerly a member of the Presiding Bishopric. A son of Bishop Wells was killed in Emigration Canyon on a railroad track. Brother John Wells was a great detail man and prepared many of the reports we are following up today. His boy was run over by a freight train. Sister Wells was inconsolable. She mourned during the three days prior to the funeral, received no comfort at the funeral, and was in a rather serious state of mind. One day soon after the funeral services, while she was lying on her bed relaxed, still mourning, she says that her son appeared to her and said, “Mother, do not mourn. Do not cry. I am all right.” He told her that she did not understand how the accident happened. He explained that he had given a signal to the engineer to move on and then made the usual effort to catch the railings on the freight train, but as he attempted to do so his foot caught on a root and he failed to catch the hand rail and his body fell under the train. It was clearly an accident. He said that as soon as he realized that he was in another environment he tried to see his father but he could not reach his father. His father was so busy with the duties in the office that he could not respond to his call; therefore, he had come to his mother instead and he said to her, “You tell Father that all is well with me. I want you to not mourn anymore.”

Then the President made this statement. The president said that the point he had in mind was that when we are relaxed in a private room we are more susceptible to those things, that so far as he was concerned his best thoughts come after he gets up in the morning and is relaxed and thinking about the duties of the day, that impressions come more clearly as if he were to hear a voice and those impressions are right. If we are worried about something and upset in our feelings the inspiration does not come. If we so live that our minds are free from worry and our conscience clear and our feelings are right toward one another, the operation of the spirit, of the Lord upon our spirit is as real as when we pick up the telephone; but when they come, we must be brave enough to take the suggested action. The Lord will approve it and the brethren will approve it and we know it is right. He said "It is a great consolation in this upset world today to know that our Savior is directing this work." Then the President said "I value that testimony." Well if you forget all else I have said, you remember that lesson and that admonition.

Harold B. Lee, “Prayer,” Address to Seminary and Institute Faculty, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, July 6, 1956, p. 19.