welcome March 17, 2003 ISSUE

Hope rises

Bettie Gray

"People Can Change; that gives me hope," said author Studs Terkel in a Hope magazine interview last summer (July/August 2002).

It is indeed good to see people change—to see them grow spiritually, gain peace, lose fear. But their progress shouldn't come as a shock to us. To freeze-frame a person's character is unfair ... and as off-track as being amazed when we see that the four-year-old we once knew has changed dramatically (My, how you've grown!) since our last meeting—a decade earlier.

Life has a natural forward momentum—a spirit of progress. So do people. And sometimes all it takes to make a big difference in a life, in a world, is one small step in the right direction. Sentinel founder Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God" (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 354). Some of those steps are well within reach—a little more grace ... a few truths.

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