THANK GOD FOR BEING SUCH A KNOW-IT- ALL Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, who writes well about prayer. "I should like very much to meet Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford (who said that Waugh's description of the…
Sermon Illustrations
MYSELF I have to live with myself, and so I want to be fit for myself to know, I want to be able, as days go by, Always to look myself straight in the eye;…
MY BUSH BURNED My bush burned this morning, burned and was not consumed, as I gathered with sisters and brothers in the faith for the ultimate act of defiance, A Christian burial service. My heart…
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES One Easter, a little girl named Audrey came home from school and was greeted by her grandfather who was visiting. Audrey couldn't wait to tell him all about her new friend. "And what…
COOKED FROG Two cub scouts got bored on their overnight camping trip, so they decided to cook a frog. They put a pot of water on the fire and brought it to a boil. Then…
WEALTH We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. "If a man will not work he shall not eat," wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Indeed, abundance rather than poverty…
IN YOUR TIME OF NEED There comes a time in life when we have to let go and trust all we are and can be to the Giver of life. There is a time of…
FROM THE PORTABLE CURMUDGEON Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone. John Ciardi. The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is…
THE FIRST STORY Our new coeditor will begin by telling a story of pastoral embarrassment. A number of years ago I was pastoring my first church in a suburban area. The church had just purchased…
WAITING ON GOD Here is another version of a story you may have heard before. . . Several pastors were telling each other how his church determined how the offerings were received and distributed. One…
ON PRAYER Are we so substandard to New Testament Christianity that we know not the historical faith of our fathers (with its implications and operations), but only the hysterical faith of our fellows? Prayer is…
SPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT Two men were golfing together near a cemetery. While the one man was preparing to putt, a hearse turned into the cemetery. He immediately looked up, dropped his putter, removed his cap and…
SUPERBOWL WISDOM During the boredom of Superbowl XXIV, the announcers had to come up with some pretty good filler stories. One that was particularly good was told of a San Francisco player. The day before,…
TAKE HEED, LEST YOU FALL A few short years ago, a torrential rain caused a swollen creek to wash out the underpinnings of a bridge on the New York State Throughway. One truck and several…
ONE FOR JOHNNY "IT'S GOD'S WORLD" is a great little weekly newsletter for children. Here is a story from the edition dated January 25, 1990. In 1926, Johnny Sylvester got kicked in the head by…
EFFECTIVE WEAPONS In his book The Last Lion, William Manchester relates that, at the beginning of World War II, Nazi Germany was preparing to invade Poland. Though the world had not yet seen the might…
THE SEARCH A. M. Hunter applies this piece of a T. S. Eliot poem to the experience of the Prodigal: The end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started, and to…
ALL YOU CAN DRINK FOR A DIME An enterprising young boy placed a sign over his new lemonade stand which read, "ALL YOU CAN DRINK FOR A DIME." His first customer was a businessman who…
INSIGHT FROM THE WISDOM OF A CHILD I have always enjoyed asking my children what they learned in their Sunday School class. My oldest daughter, then five years of age, came up to me after…
THE CROSS AND LIFE A new missionary was sent to an area of Africa which had not been introduced to the gospel of God's love. The missionary discovered just how hard it is to explain…
