CRITICISM / ADVICE If one person calls you an ass or a donkey, pay no attention to him. But if five people call you one, go out and buy yourself a saddle. Arabian proverb
Sermon Illustrations
OVERCOMING ADVERSITY One other quote from Engstrom's book he attributes to Dr. F. Carlton Booth (of Fuller Seminary and World Vision): Some of the world's greatest men and women have been saddled with disabilities and…
PRESS ON Press on! Though mist obscure The steep and rugged way, And clouds of doubt beset, Soon dawns the brighter day. Keep on! Though hours seem long And days deep-fraught with woe, Let patience…
MARRIAGE -- HOW TO GET ALONG A Lawyer and a psychologist were making small talk at a party. "You and your wife get along very well," said the lawyer. "Do you ever have differences of…
SO YOU'RE THE NEW PASTOR AND YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE CHANGES? I 've enjoyed reading a book entitled Corporate Messiah: The Hiring and Firing of Million- Dollar Managers by Patricia O'Toole (Signet, 1984, page 208).…
REFORMATION SUNDAY When I think of Reformation Sunday, I think of the story I read somewhere about a dream that Martin Luther is supposed to have had. In the dream, he stood on the day…
REJECTION The story of Elijah sitting under the juniper tree and pouting as he had been chased out of town by a ticked-off Jezebel is a study in rejection. He'd had it. Rejection is a…
BE NOT DISMAYED Be not dismayed if you are overwhelmed By loss that has no answer on its face, Or grief that leaves your very life unhelmed, Or rage that makes you, briefly, lost to…
THE WORD GOES OUT -- EVEN IN TATTERS I 've recently enjoyed reading Ruth Tucker's book, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions. It is a fascinating survey of Christian missions…
RESPONSE TO CRANKS Gary Moore once devised an answer to take care of crank letters. "The enclosed letter," he would write, "arrived on my desk a few days ago. I am sending it to you…
LEBANON Ahmed is 15. He is too old, too worldly wise for that age. The Time reporter tells us: "The saddest thing Ahmed has ever seen, he says, is the sight of children without their…
UNAWARE An airliner, stacked over a major airport, contacted the tower and was told to hold at 3,000 feet. The pilot radioed back that he was indeed holding at 3000 feet. Suddenly, another voice cut…
EXPLANATIONS Political commentator Mark Shields tells this story as reported in Psychology Today (Nov. '84). The weekend before a Presidential election,(not the 1984 one, obviously. Ed.) a lowly Democratic Party hanger-on in the Second Ward…
ON SPEAKING UP In Germany they came first for the Communist, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't…
REAL VILLAINS In reading Harry Reasoner's reminiscences about the first 25 years of network TV news I came across this piece on "villains" in his describing the reporting of the Little Rock, Arkansas school integration…
STAND UP TO BE COUNTED! Some years ago Premier Kruschev was speaking before the Supreme Soviet and was severely critical of the late Premier Stalin. While he was speaking someone from the audience sent up…
KNOW HOW TO GO WITH THE FLOW The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. Edward Gibbon
PERSPECTIVE If you can smile when everything is going wrong the chances are you're a plumber working on a Sunday. Funny, Funny World
SIGN TO POST IN THE BOARD ROOM OF YOUR CHURCH "Nothing will ever be accomplished if every objection must be overcome." Samuel Johnson
DEEP DOWN PESSIMISM Seen on a tee shirt in San Luis Obispo, CA: "Life is hard. Then you die."
