A college class was graduating on a hot and humid day. As graduates walked across the platform and received their diplomas from the college president, he smiled, shook their hands, and said loudly, “Congratulations!” Then,…
Sermon Illustrations
Have you ever noticed how most people, including the most intelligent among us, will argue their position or point of view, without ever hearing, and possibly benefiting from what the other person has to say?…
Some people feel greatly honored when they are given a place at the dinner table where the finest china and the costliest linen are set. But the people who are really honored are the ones…
“When I thought, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul” (Psalms 94:18-19). As director of the New…
Many years ago, in the cornerstone of its new office building, a large insurance company buried a capsule containing a number of predictions by community leaders as to what life in the United States would…
There is an amusing story of a woman who one day decided to read the New Testament and investigate the claims of Christianity. Several months later she was baptized. Immediately following the ritual she said…
Dr. Bernie Siegel’s seven steps to healing: 1. Accept your illness! Being resigned to an illness is destructive, allows the illness to run your life, but accepting allows energy to be freed for other things…
Shortly before his death, the famous American missionary doctor, Tom Dooley, returned to the U.S. to raise additional funds for his hospital in Southeast Asia. As a doctor, he knew he had terminal cancer and…
(“... the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable . . . If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”…
A man with a terrible lung condition went to the doctor. The doctor said to him, “Do you smoke?” The man said “No, I don’t smoke.” The doctor said, “Too bad. It would be great…
A little girl was walking along beside her father on an evening stroll. She kept looking up at the stars. She was fascinated by them, but she wasn’t talking about it. Finally her father asked…
Do Daddy’s ever go to heaven?” a little girl asked her mother. “Why of course dear,” said the mother. “Why do you ask?” “Because I’ve never seen angels with whiskers. ”Soundings” (adapted).
In his well-known play, “No Exit,” French philosopher/ author/playwright Jean Paul Sartre, tells the story of a woman and a man who find themselves together in a comfortable living room. There they are given to…
In the famous novel, “The Diary of a Country Priest,” by Georges Bernanos, there is a moving scene in which the priest encounters a woman who is completely turned in on herself. She has been…
When Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned in the Tower of London, he decided to pass the time by writing a history of the world. He had filled about two hundred pages when, one morning, he…
Aldous Huxley was once asked for his general observations on the nature of history. “Generally speaking,” answered the famous author, “history is one damn thing after the other.”
"Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry…
How can you tell if you really want to do something? Toss a coin. Literally! It works, not because it settles the question for you, but, as the Danish poet and mathematician Piet Hein said,…
When news reporter Marguerite Higgins was covering the Korean War she received the Pulitzer Prize for her perceptive, sensitive stories. On one occasion, she wrote about being with the Fifth Company of Marines. It was…
A man who was an insomniac for thirty years finally decided to see a psychiatrist. “Why can’t you sleep at night?” the doctor asked. “Because I’m trying to solve all the worlds problems.” The psychiatrist…
