Each weekly issue of The Christian Science Monitor magazine that I open inspires me with an article on someone who is making a difference in the world. The “People Making a Difference” series may be at the back of the magazine, but it is the first thing I read. I was similarly inspired last spring when my son and I attended the Rotary International Convention in Bangkok, Thailand. Over 50,000 people from around the world were there—160 nations representing 35,000 clubs, all making a difference.
The event did not get much press coverage, but it was a significant gathering. Each Rotary club works alongside churches and other organizations on national and international projects geared to meet major needs. For the next decade, the organization’s international emphasis is on eradicating illiteracy and poverty, and there were and are other projects providing food, water, and shelter to the victims of natural disasters and war.
The 19th-century American clergyman Phillips Brooks was quoted at the convention as having said, “God has given to every one of us the power to be spiritual, and by our spirituality to lift and enlarge and enlighten the lives we touch.” In a similar vein, Mary Baker Eddy urged her students to “labor to awake the slumbering capability of man” (Message to The Mother Church for 1900, p. 3). Isn’t that spirituality the very basis of making a difference?
