Let me share an experience when inspiration came to me,
providing a service opportunity. A longtime friend of mine, a
robust athlete and all-star football player, was stricken with a
malady that left him confined to a wheelchair. The doctors said he would never walk again. One day, as usual, in my morning prayers,
I petitioned my Heavenly Father to know what He would have me
do that day. Later that afternoon, as I was swimming in the pool at
the old Deseret Gym, there came to my mind the thought, “Here
you swim almost effortlessly, while your friend Stan languishes in
his hospital bed, unable to move.” I felt the prompting: “Get to the
hospital and give him a blessing.” Quickly, I left the pool, dressed,
and hurried to Stan’s hospital room. His bed was empty. A nurse
said he was in his wheelchair at the swimming pool, preparing for therapy. I hurried to
the area, and there was Stan, totally despondent, all alone at the edge of the pool, ready
to give up on life itself. I told him how I happened to be there. I said, “I didn’t just come,
Stan. The Lord knew you needed a blessing. He knew that you needed such from one who
knows you.” We returned to his hospital room where a blessing was provided. The Spirit of
the Lord was there.
Day-by-day, Stan grew stronger. One day, about a year later, there was a knock at my
office door, and in walked my friend who had been told he would never walk again. He
handed his cane to his son, who was to be set apart for a mission, and walked over to my desk. What joy! What a moment of thanksgiving! Later he stood in
the holy temple witnessing his daughter’s marriage. He stood without
a cane. He expressed his gratitude for the inspiration that had
come to me that day in the swimming pool at the Deseret Gym.
Opportunities to give of ourselves are limitless, but they are
A Prophet's Voice--Messages from Thomas S. Monson, Threads in Your Tapestry, p441
