Question 3: Share a transforming experience like Saul to Paul which came about reading Skip’s article(s).

In April 2018, I drove several hundred miles to attend a historical commemoration. For years, I had studied this particular event and its circumstances, which involved the assassination of a major figure and the response to it.

When I arrived in the city for the event, my car hit a pole and was totaled. In the hotel room that night, I worked with Mr. Phinney’s article “New religion and old religion” (Journal, March 1988). That article includes an anecdote about a memorial service for a sailor who had been lost at sea. But during the service, the sailor himself walked in. The article states, “You can imagine people’s joy. . . . You can also see that this event would change nearly everything in regard to the agenda for the day.” Skip’s article elucidates the fact that the Christ is always present. There is no need for memorials of something from the past, when the Christ is here now!

This recognition had immediate effects in my life. I finished the trip harmoniously and I also had a significant healing of a physical problem of at least five years standing. In the weeks following, I made a final decision to leave my career as a history teacher and enter the field of journalism, where I remain today. In this experience, I found more of “the life that maketh all things new” (Christian Science Hymnal, 218).