ATTITUDE AND HANDICAPS I knew a man who was a member of our church. He had retired and was able finally to devote some time to work in his workshop. In the course of completing…
Sermon Illustrations
DEMOSTHENES When Demosthenes, the famed Greek orator, first spoke in public, he was hissed off the platform. His voice was harsh and weak and his appearance unimpressive. He determined that his fellow citizens would yet…
PERSISTENCE Among those who have overcome adversity include: Beethoven, whose best works were composed after he had lost his hearing; Louis Pasteur, whose greatest discoveries were made after he had suffered a stroke which threatened…
GOD'S ATTENTION GETTERS Joyce Jones is a renowned concert organist and teacher at Baylor University. Several years ago she played the first full concert on the new pipe organ at the Crystal Cathedral in California,…
DESPITE BLINDNESS George Matheson was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1842. Before he reached the age of two, it was discovered that his eyesight was defective. He, his parents, and the specialists fought a heroic…
FAILURE AND PERSEVERANCE When he was seven years old, his family was forced out of their home on a legal technicality, and he had to work to help support them. At age nine, his mother…
TRUE TALE Fred Craddock, while delivering the Lyman Beecher Lecture series on preaching at Yale University, related this story from his personal life: A few years ago my wife and I were on vacation in…
PREJUDICE A first grader went on her first day to a newly integrated school at the height of the segregation storm. An anxious mother met her at the door to inquire, "How did everything go,…
SORROW -- THE TEACHER I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow, And ne'er…
CHOICES: TWO WAYS OF RESPONDING Two paraplegics were in the news recently. One was Kenneth Wright, a high school football star and later, an avid wrestler, boxer, hunter and skin diver. A broken neck sustained…
HELPING TO MAKE MICKEY ACCEPTABLE Earlier this month, the in-house magazine for France's left- wing intellectuals came out with a cover that showed a jubilant Mickey Mouse flying over the Eiffel Tower. "American Cultural Invasion,"…
OUT RANKED: OR, SCENES THAT WOULD LOOK GREAT IN THE MOVIE S. I just finished reading Yeager, the autobiography of Chuck Yeager, well-known war hero, test pilot (who first broke the sound barrier) and currently…
SURVIVING CRITICISM Tom Wolfe is the well known author of The Right Stuff. (About the astronauts) and a number of other popular topics. He has written articles that have assaulted our current culture. After one…
A RIGHT PERSPECTIVE Matthew Henry, the famous Bible scholar was once accosted by thieves and robbed of his purse. He wrote these words in his diary: "Let me be thankful first because I was never…
REACHING ONE'S LIMITS It was recently reported in Herb Caen's column that a guy was walking down a Santa Monica, California street lugging a "ghetto-blaster" radio blaring at top volume, when a feller pointed a…
DECISIONS The story is told of an elderly man who, a number of years ago, had lost his right arm in an accident. At first the trauma of the loss totally destroyed the man's desire…
GOD'S METHOD OF COMMUNICATION As an English medical doctor in Africa for 30 years, Helen Rosavere saw her country develop and face some of the problems that other developing nations in Africa were facing. There…
ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST The following excerpt is taken from Lee Iacocca's autobiography, Iacocca, pgs. 314-315: Shortly after I joined Chrysler, I flew over to Japan for a series of meetings with the top people at Mitsubishi…
CRITICISM Just finished reading A Time for Remembering: The Ruth Bell Graham Story by Patricia Daniels Cornwell (Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1983). I found a number of items I'll be using in coming days…
THE LEGEND OF RICHARD THE LION HEART Some pastors are crusaders. They have a cause that is larger than life. And occasionally they touch home base and do some knitty gritty pastoral work. I'm sure…
