As we celebrate the conversion of St Pau! when Christ met him on the Damascus road, let us be ready to respond to Christ's call on our own life's road, that we might follow wherever he leads."

You have all probably seen or heard of the bus adverts in London and other UK cities which say "There is probably no God, live life and enjoy yourselves". These slogans were placed there by the British Humanist society and one of their prominent members is Professor Richard Dawkins. This Oxford educated academic has become something of a professional atheist in our day, known for writings and comments berating religious belief in general and, it seems, Christianity in particular. His book The God Delusion has been described as an 'attack on God in all his forms'.

But suppose Professor Dawkins announced his conversion to the Christianity he so virulently attacks? Can you imagine the newspaper headlines, the reports on TV etc, the commotion he would cause? And what would be your reaction if he joined our congregation or volunteered his services as a Sunday Schoo! teacher

To his contemporaries, Saul must have seemed the least likely Christian convert one could meet. His matchless Jewish background, religious scholarship and rigorous righteousness set h~m deeply at odds with the followers of Christ. Besides, he was a Roman citizen, a respectable figure in an Empire where fledgling Christianity was very much at the grace. As Sau! makes the 150 mile journey 

from Jerusalem to Damascus, on a mission to extradite Christians fleeing his punitive grip, he is stopped in his hacks by the light of Christ himsel£ Jesus speaks to him, not to threaten vengeance, but simply to ask why Saul is persecuting him through attacking his followers. God's power is at work as Sau! sees lesus and hears him speak directly in a way not fully experienced by his companions. The result is physical blindness even as Sau! receives his spiritual sight. As we see God's power breaking through into Saul's life, we also start to discern God's perspective. For Saut is a man so devoted to truth that he brings nothing less than a wholehearted and single-minded commitment to his understanding of where the truth lies. Harnessed to God's purposes, such a character could be extraordinarily fruitfull for the kingdom. Though an unlikely convert in our eyes, Saul is a most appropr~ate choice to receive God's call into the ground-breaking ministry of establishing and growing his church. And people, sllch as Sau! are still being called by God.

Wellesley Bailey, the founder of the Leprosy Mission in 1874 was one ofthese. He wanted to take the gospe} message of God's love and the actions of Jesus to those who suffered hom leprosy. We read in the gospel of Mark (Mark! :40-45) how Jesus broke the lewish law when he reached out to the leper in his suffering, blessed him and healed him. This is the example to Bailey and he was to work for over 60 years tirelessly, in the light of Jesus, actions, to comfort and to try to heal those who sufered, but was to die a mere handful of years before a cure for leprosy was found.

The work of the Leprosy Mission is an exciting adventure. A few years ago the mission asked itself the all important question "What should we be doing as we look to the future? With one voice, the answer was returned. "We should work towards a world without leprosy!', So it is with renewed vision anct fiesh commitment to the founding principles of Wellesley Bailey that they move forward

The mission says, 'We will continue with our ministry until leprosy is a thing of the past. Because we are there lives are still being changed. The job is far from finished, many millions of people still bear the marks of leprosy and a new case of leprosy is still being diagnosed somewhere in the world every 90 seconds or so

The Leprosy Mission is a channel for God's unchanging love to flow to those who through no fault of their own suflher from leprosy. It connects those who need to be touched by the Master today to those who have the desire and means to make that happen. The Leprosy Mission is a part of the body of Christ, of his church; and if we, who profess to love him do not reach out to those who suffer, who will?

Let us not in our anxiety about our tomorrow, forget about those who today are living the shadowy existence of leprosyand who without us, will never be able to live life in all its iblIness

God knew tere was more to Saul and in Saul than human eyes could see and God also saw in Wellesley Bailey the potential for efective ministry in Christ's service.

In Saul and Wellesley, we can see how God can work in the least likely people and places in our lives, as he brings about his purposes far bolder and more glorious than we could ever imagine.