As far as I can tell from a little Google searching, this phrase originated from Camilla Kimball, wife of a past president of our church. Here is the story, as told by Relief Society General President Bonnie D. Parkin in 2007 in a talk titled "Personal Ministry: Sacred and Precious":
My daughter-in-law’s mother, Susan, was a wonderful seamstress. President Kimball lived in their ward. One Sunday, Susan noticed that he had a new suit. Her father had recently returned from a trip to New York and had brought her some exquisite silk fabric. Susan thought that fabric would make a handsome tie to go with President Kimball’s new suit. So on Monday she made the tie. She wrapped it in tissue paper and walked up the block to President Kimball’s home.
On her way to the front door, she suddenly stopped and thought, “Who am I to make a tie for the prophet? He probably has plenty of them.” Deciding she had made a mistake, she turned to leave.
Just then Sister Kimball opened the front door and said, “Oh, Susan!”
Stumbling all over herself, Susan said, “I saw President Kimball in his new suit on Sunday. Dad just brought me some silk from New York . . . and so I made him a tie.”
Before Susan could continue, Sister Kimball stopped her, took hold of her shoulders, and said: “Susan, never suppress a generous thought.”
Susan didn’t have an assignment to make that tie. She wasn’t hired to do so. Despite feeling a bit hesitant, she did it because it felt right. Susan had a quiet sense of mission to serve others. I was also the beneficiary of such service. Her service went beyond any calling because it lasted throughout her life. Never suppressing a generous thought became a part of her personal ministry.
This was really a great talk by Sister Parkin, and I can't help but share another quotation from it that struck me, possibly because as a mom I feel like I'm always doing things in the middle of doing other things.
Most ministering opportunities are spontaneous, not planned in advance. Much of the Savior’s ministering seemed almost incidental, happening while He was on His way to somewhere else—while He was doing something else. Chapter 9 of the Gospel of Matthew is an amazing illustration of that.
Early in the chapter, the Savior disembarked a ship. A man with palsy was brought to Him. Jesus stopped and healed him. Then Jesus had a discussion with the Pharisees and a man interrupted, saying his daughter had died. So Jesus left to assist the man. On His way, a woman touched His garment. Jesus healed her. He continued on His way and raised the girl from the dead. As He departed her home, two blind men followed Him, and He healed them. As He continued on His way, He cast the devil from a man possessed. All of this took place in one chapter! He gave us the example of ministering as He went.
...Just as ministering doesn’t always need to be planned, it doesn’t need to be spectacular. It is something we can do every day in natural, comfortable ways. Mother Teresa suggested that we “do small things with great love.”
I had a little "never suppress a generous thought" moment on Friday. I was in the checkout line at Walmart after grocery shopping with Andrew, and I saw a lady wheeling her cart toward me from the side. My first thought was "is she trying to cut in line ahead of me?" I asked her if she was trying to get through the line to get to the line on the other side of me, and she said she was just trying to get in line. So I moved forward a little to allow her to get in line after me. Then she mentioned that her hip was giving her a terrible time. The conveyor belt was emptying, so I started loading my groceries onto it. Just about the same time, the thought popped into my head that maybe I should let her go ahead of me, since she was complaining about her hip. She had just taken a seat on part of the check-out stand behind us to rest, and I figured it would be awkward to take my groceries off the conveyor belt and put them back in my cart, and besides Andrew and I had been on our shopping trip for two hours and we needed to get home, etc, etc. But as I continued to load my vegetables onto the conveyor belt, that same thought kept coming back, this time accompanied by the words "never suppress a generous thought." So I put my groceries back into my cart and told her that she could go ahead of me. She thanked me and then said that she was in such pain. She started slowly loading her groceries onto the belt, and it didn't take much more nudging by the voice in my head for me to offer to help her load up her groceries. She thanked me again. I could tell by her words and voice that she was in enough pain that she didn't even try to politely refuse. What a simple, easy thing for me to do, yet how close I was to dismissing the generous thought. It made me realize that I need to more readily follow promptings of the Spirit to do kind things, and I need to be better at pushing aside those silly little excuses not to.
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