It reminds me of a story David McCullough tells in his book MORNINGS ON HORSEBACK about young Teddy Roosevelt: Roosevelt's mother discovered one day that her son was so afraid of the Madison Square Church where their family attended that he refused to set foot inside if alone. He was terrified, she discovered, of something called the 'zeal.' This zeal was crouched in the dark corners of the church ready to jump at him, he said. When she asked what a zeal might be, he said he was not sure, but thought it was probably a large animal like an alligator or a dragon. He had heard the minister read about it from the Bible.

Using a concordance, she read him those passages containing the word zeal until suddenly, very excited, he told her to stop. The line was from John, 2:17, "And his disciples remembered that it was written, 'The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.'" Young Teddy wanted nothing to do with this zeal that could eat people up.

The word 'enthusiasm' comes from the Greek word ENTHOUSIASMOS which means 'the God within you.' May we let God's zeal shine through us. Our world needs it.

Ron Newhouse