Sometimes I hear people talk about a spiritual experience they call “a leading”. I am still trying to figure out exactly what this is. I have had thoughts of people come into my head and have wondered if that means I am supposed to contact them. People pop into my consciousness all day long. If I acted on these thoughts, I’d be on the phone all the time. I have felt an intense interest in going places or attending events, but I am one of those people who cannot be in two places at the same time. I have had ideas to pursue a variety of paths that interest me but there are not enough hours in a day nor days in my life to follow all of them. I was on the phone with a friend the other day and she said, “I feel a leading to pray for you.” So she did right then and there with the phone still hung on my ear. Her prayer was such that I think that she was correct about her urge being a leading but I am still baffled by the whole idea.
Most of what I do is simply what I do. I don’t have this sense of “leading”. I either perceive an action as something that needs to be done or as something I just plain want to do. I do have an after-the-fact experiences, though, that come in different forms. One might be the satisfaction of a task done well. I feel that right now as I came up to the resort and am accomplishing some end-of-the season chores. Sometimes I set out to do one thing and another event jumps in my path. I remember stopping at a grocery store and running into a woman I knew years back and we talked for 20 minutes about her concerns for her son. Another might be the sense of delight I feel when I encounter nature’s beauty or art in some form. I have a friend who plays the hammer dulcimer and I always feel this way when he plays. I may have an encounter with someone who speaks such truth to me that it feels like God speaking. The friend I told you about in yesterday’s blog, “Cutting a Canoe” did that for me as did the friend who prayed for me.
If a leading is sensing where to go or what to do next, I don’t usually experience that. But I do get glimpses that where I am right now is where I am supposed to be.