From the editors May 31, 2004 Issue

Lukewarm or on fire?

One of the greatest stories of transformation in the Bible is told in the account of Saul of Tarsus. A belligerent man, who actively tried to disrupt the burgeoning Christian movement in the years following Jesus' resurrection, Saul was filled with a misguided mission. Yet, in the middle of his determination to bring down Christians, he himself had a dramatic and life-altering transformation. And it turned him into one of the greatest Christian advocates of all time. Taking the new name of Paul, he turned his back on his former mission. His conversion on the road to Damascus filled him with a holy fire, and he was reborn—determined to spread Christianity throughout the Mediterranean world.

What would all the Christian churches look like today in every town and city if there were just one Paul in every church? Maybe that one on-fire missionary would have a similar effect to what Jesus spoke of in a parable to his followers. He told about the leaven (yeast) that a woman hid in "three measures of meal"—and it leavened the whole loaf (see Matt. 13:33).

Nineteen centuries later, writing about the growing awareness of Christian Science in her own time, Mary Baker Eddy wrote: "Within the last decade religion in the United States has passed from stern Protestantism to doubtful liberalism. God speed the right! ... Christian Science, the little leaven hid in three measures of meal,—ethics, medicine, and religion,—is rapidly fermenting, and enlightening the world with the glory of untrammelled truth" (Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 2).

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