Prayer breakfasts are an established part of community life in many parts of the world. Occasionally, before people start the day's work, they like to gather over a simple meal in a hotel, restaurant, church hall, or conference room to enjoy fellowship and discuss their needs, hopes, victories, and spiritual breakthroughs.

Some prayer breakfasts are on a larger scale, as, for example, the gathering last year in San Diego during the annual convention of the American Legislative Exchange Council—a national organization comprising State Representatives and Senators from all of the fifty states.

One of the guest speakers at that breakfast was John Selover, a member of The Christian Science Board of Directors.

Here are some excerpts from his talk:

Your attendance here this morning is solid evidence of the spiritual vitality that is beginning to rise to the surface—restoring that which was considered natural in the founding of this nation.

Your program calls upon me to offer a testimonial of how the Lord has been present and active in my life. May I presume to enlarge this and make it our collective testimony of the presence of God in our lives and communities?

You have been praying. You have been meeting at prayer breakfasts, you worship in your churches, temples, mosques. You pray for yourselves, for each other, for your work, and for your communities. This prayer is an active spiritual influence, a spiritual leaven in all you do. And the Bible encourages us: "... a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" [I Cor. 5:6]. I think we can feel encouraged with the results of your prayers.

Aren't you finding an upwelling of the joy in good values, in responsible parenting, in sound education, in greater trust in the practical usefulness of prayer, and a more spiritual grasp of the presence of God with us? These things haven't just happened; they are the effect of the prayer all of us are devoting to their appearing.

There is a startling definition of leaven in The Abingdon Bible Commentary: "When placed under the microscope the working of leaven in the meal looks like a veritable battlefield: there is assault and penetration in the face of determined resistance until peace descends after the whole has been conquered" [p. 978].

The leaven of spiritualized thought gained through prayer has a powerful lot of work to do, but it is equal to the task. It can take the heat; it can stand and win in the face of determined resistance.

American society is going somewhere. And you and your prayers are an essential part of the spiritual engine for this journey. I think we're in the beginning stages of the greatest migration ever seen on the face of this earth. Let me explain.

Migration of peoples from one place to another has changed the face of civilization in so many ways. Such movements have happened as people's hopes or discontents have caused them to go someplace else. Take those Old Testament examples: Abraham leading his people out of Ur of the Chaldees ... not even knowing where they were going. And, Moses leading his people out of Egypt to their Promised Land.

Relatively modern history has seen this hemisphere and this country populated by the migration of peoples. The words fairly ring out from the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor," and the power of a sense of destiny led those peoples from one shining sea to another.

The world is full now. There are few places left to migrate to. Migration as a social safety valve is pretty well gone. So if there is to be another great migration—and I do quite seriously think it will be the greatest ever seen—who are the people who will migrate, and where will they go?

This migration is a movement of thought. A movement into a fresh realm of higher and more spiritual values. Into a realm of higher worth and unselfishness. Into a realm where the commandments we value—loving God, and our neighbors as ourselves—will describe our behavior toward each other. For those of you who are state legislators, the migrants are your constituents, and they are moving—they are on their way.

The new land, this more spiritual realm, is reached through the movement of thought shaped by prayer. The realm of spiritualized thought has wonderful characteristics. It is right here. It can never be overpopulated. It has a common language. There are no fences around it. No visa or passport is asked. The requirements for citizenship in this land are between each individual immigrant and God.

This nation has a heritage unlike any other on the earth. It is rooted in worship, in prayer, in trust in God. This trust is evident in our founding documents. That vision and trust in God led James Madison to move his fellow founders beyond religious tolerance to religious freedom. We sing of God's goodness and protection in our hymns and anthems; we trade in the trust of God through our coinage and monetary systems. God has a part in our courts in the swearing in of witnesses. Trust in God has established this great gift of nationhood. Our very foundation stones are made up of our nation's collective appeal to the Almighty. And in Biblical words we could say, "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us" [I Sam. 7:12].

You have a role of leadership in this new migration. You readily accept and understand that prayer is necessary to you in leading this migration. And through your skillful legislative work you provide the continuity of freedom that makes the journey possible.

You pray to be a good or better legislator. You pray to be guided to provide needed, sensitive, clear legislation. You pray to resolve differences. You pray for guidance in your reelection campaigns. You pray to follow the ethical standards required of you. You pray, like Solomon, for wisdom to "judge this thy so great a people" [I Kings 3:9]. You pray to maintain or to restore your health and well-being, to be able to continue to serve effectively.

This prayer has brought strength, moral sinew, clear vision, compassion, love, to your role as responsible legislative leaders. I willingly say again that what you are praying about at this breakfast meeting is bringing about a movement to more spiritual altitudes—a migration.

I have given a great deal of thought to the spiritual content of leadership and its responsibilities because of the requirements of my own work. There's an example of this which I hope will interest you. Mary Baker Eddy, in her book on spirituality and healing, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, writes of Sir Charles Napier. Here's what she says: "By looking a tiger fearlessly in the eye, Sir Charles Napier sent it cowering back into the jungle" [p. 378]. My curiosity was very much roused by this brief sentence and I did some research.

Napier was governor of a state in India. His leadership was widely respected. He had been among the first to recognize the notable achievements of individual soldiers and sailors in his reports. His qualities of leadership won him the admiration of the lowly and the mighty.

The tiger story is that Napier and his wife were riding horseback on a jungle trail when he saw a lurking tiger. He immediately asked his wife to ride on. He stopped, sat his horse, and stared at the tiger. Some of you may have tried to keep a horse steady in the presence of a wild animal. It's not easy. Under Napier's gaze the tiger turned and left.

What happened? My sense of this encounter is that contrary to the conventional notion that the tiger had a great meal in his grasp, that tiger found something unexpected and very different. From what I learned about Napier I could see that what the tiger encountered was authority, leadership, power, strength, compassion, care, alertness, courage—none of which were edible. So the tiger left.

You will probably face "tigers" along the path of this spiritual migration, and, like Napier, you have some of the same powerful qualities of leadership. These are spiritual qualities of thought, and they are enlarged and energized through your prayers. They will heal you and keep you safe from harm. They are the qualities of thought that are helping to lead the spiritual migration that has begun. I'm sure there are other ways to bring about good qualities of leadership. Prayer happens to be the one I trust and am most familiar with.

In this nongeographical migration, this movement into a more spiritual understanding of our lives and work and loves, prayer breakfasts play a part. This occasion, and the like occasions in your home legislatures, will move this migration forward, upward. Each meeting, each prayer, each healing, and each victory shared is a step more spiritual.

As has surfaced again and again in this conference, prayer and worship have a place, not only in our hearts and minds, but in our institutions. In the institution called the United States of America we defend the principle of the separation of church and state. May our prayers help us to keep this deep and historical axiom in balance and perspective today.

I would offer that throughout the history of our country it has been far, far safer for our courts and legislatures to be affected by our worship of God, than for our worship of God to be affected by our courts and legislatures.

Prayer will continue to provide the signposts and directions to each of us in the vital, necessary, and inevitable spiritual migration that you have helped to begin.

DEUTERONOMY

The Lord thy God bringeth thee
into a good land, a land of
brooks of water, of fountains
and depths that spring out of
valleys and hills.

Deuteronomy 8:7