《Sermon Illustrations (D~F)》(a compilation) table of contents
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- EXPOSED
- EXPRESSION
- EXTREME
- FACTION
- FAILURE
HumorA magician working a cruise ship had a pet parrot who was constantly ruining his act. The bird would say to the audience, "He has the card in his pocket," or "The card's up his sleeve," or "It went through a hole in his top hat." One day there was a huge explosion and the ship sank. The parrot and the magician, both dazed and bruised, found themselves together on a piece of wreckage. For four days the parrot stared at the magician. Finally, the parrot said, "Okay, I give up. What did you do with the ship?" Parts Pups. EXPOSEDWilliam Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State in Woodrow Wilson's Cabinet, was interviewing a man who was seeking a diplomatic post in China. Bryan warned the applicant that it was necessary to qualify as a linguist. "Can you speak the Chinese language?" he asked. The man was equal to the occasion. Looking Bryan squarely in the eye, he replied, "Try me. Ask me something in Chinese." John F. Parker in Washington Roll Call, Reader's Digest, May, 1981. EXPRESSIONAt the commencement exercises for Purdue University's engineering schools, graduates of each school stood en masse to be recognized by the dean of engineering. When the aeronautical-engineering students rose, they launched a swarm of paper airplanes toward the stage, where the university's president and other dignitaries were sitting. After students from all the schools had risen in turn, the president stepped up to the rostrum. Looking at the paper planes covering the stage floor, he remarked, "I'm very glad the agricultural-engineering graduates decided not to throw anything." Reader's Digest, May, 1990, p. 28. EXTREMEOnce the Devil was walking along with one of his cohorts. They saw a man ahead of them pick up something shiny. "What did he find?" asked the cohort. "A piece of the truth," the Devil replied. "Doesn't it bother you that he found a piece of the truth?" asked the cohort. "No," said the Devil, "I will see to it that he makes a religion out of it." Klyne Snodgrass, Between Two Truths - Living with Biblical Tensions, 1990, Zondervan Publishing House, p. 35. FACEIt is said that Abraham Lincoln, when he was President of the U.S., was advised to include a certain man in his cabinet. When he refused he was asked why he would not accept him. "I don't like his face," the President replied. "But the poor man isn't responsible for his face," responded his advocate. "Every man over forty is responsible for his face" countered Lincoln. Resource, July/August, 1990. FACTIONBut what does he (Paul) wish them to learn? That no one be puffed up for his own teacher against another, that is, that they be not lifted up with pride on account of their teachers, and do not abuse their names for the purpose of forming parties, and rending the Church asunder. Observe, too, that pride or haughtiness is the cause and commencement of all contentions, when every one, assuming to himself more than he is entitled to do, is eager to have others in subjection to him. John Calvin, Calvin's Commentaries, Vol XX, Baker, 1979, p. 158. FAILUREYou must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures. Charles Noble. 
Theodore Roosevelt said, "The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything." Edison spent more than $100,000 to obtain 6000 different fiber specimens, and only three of them proved satisfactory. Each failure brought him that much closer to the solution to his problem. His friend Henry Ford was right when he said that failure was the "opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." Warren W. Wiersbe, Confident Living, September, 1987, p. 22.
He who never makes a mistake never makes anything. Unknown. Possibly A. Lincoln.
A football coach gave this advice on how to deal with failures. "When you're about to be run out of town, get out in front and make it look like you're heading a parade." Bits & Pieces, April 30, 1992.
Thomas Edison's manufacturing facilities in West Orange, N.J., were heavily damaged by fire one night in December, 1914. Edison lost almost $1 million worth of equipment and the record of much of his work. The next morning, walking about the charred embers of his hopes and dreams, the 67-year-old inventor said: "There is value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Now we can start anew." Alan Loy McGinnis, The Power of Optimism (A longer version of this story is found below).
When Jim Burke became the head of a new products division at Johnson & Johnson, one of his first projects was the development of a children's chest rub. The product failed miserably, and Burke expected that he would be fired. When he was called in to see the chairman of the board, however, he met a surprising reception. "Are you the one who just cost us all that money?" asked Robert Wood Johnson. "Well I just want to congratulate you. If you are making mistakes, that means you are taking risks, and we won't grow unless you take risks." Some years later, when Burke himself became chairman of J&J, he continued to spread that word. Reader's Digest, Oct, 1991, p. 62.
Verdi's opera "La Traviata" was a failure when it was first performed. Even though the singers chosen for the leading roles were the best of the day, everything went wrong. The tenor had a cold and sang in a hoarse, almost inaudible voice. The soprano who played the part of the delicate, sickly heroine was one of the stoutest ladies on or off stage, and very healthy and loud. At the beginning of the Third Act when the doctor declares that consumption was wasted away the "frail, young lady" and she cannot live more than a few hours, the audience was thrown into a spasm of laughter, a state very different from that necessary to appreciate the tragic moment! Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p.182.
After the horrible carnage and Confederate retreat at Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee wrote this to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy: "We must expect reverses, even defeats. They are sent to teach us wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, and to prevent our falling into greater disasters." MBI's Today In The Word, November, 1989, p.21.
Failure is an event, never a person. William Brown, Welcome Stress!
Will Rogers' stage specialty used to be rope tricks. One day, on stage, in the middle of his act, he got tangled in is lariat. Instead of getting upset, he drawled, "A rope ain't so bad to get tangled up in if it ain't around your neck." The audience roared. Encouraged by the warm reception, Rogers began adding humorous comments to all his performances. It was the comments, not the rope tricks, that eventually made him famous. Unknown.
Between 1962 and 1977 Arthur Pedrick patented 162 inventions. Sounds impressive until you realize that none of them were taken up commercially. Among his greatest inventions were: * a bicycle with amphibious capability. * an arrangement whereby a car could be driven from the back seat. * several golf inventions, including a golf ball that could be steered in flight. The grandest scheme of Pedrick, who described himself as the "One-Man-Think-Tank Basic Research Laboratories of Sussex," was to irrigate deserts of the world by sending a constant supply of snowballs from the polar region through a massive network of giant peashooters. Unknown.
Some onlookers thought it was unusual, but few noticed when the pastor wheeled into the church parking lot in a borrowed pickup truck. But everyone's eyes were upon him when he backed the truck across the lawn to his study door. Refusing comment or assistance, he began to empty his office onto the truck bed. He was impassive and systematic: first the desk drawers, then the files, and last his library of books, which he tossed carelessly into a heap, many of them flopping askew like slain birds. His task done, the pastor left the church and, as was later learned, drove some miles to the city dump where he committed everything to the waiting garbage. It was his way of putting behind him the overwhelming sense of failure and loss that he had experienced in the ministry. This young, gifted pastor was determined never to return to the ministry. Indeed, he never did. K Hughes, Liberating Ministry From The Success Syndrome, Tyndale, 1988, p. 9.
Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, "I have failed three times," and what happens when he says, "I am a failure." S.I. Hayakawa.
Remember Vinko Bogatej? He was a ski-jumper from Yugoslavia who, while competing in the 1970 World Ski-Flying Championship in Obertsdorf, West Germany, fell off the takeoff ramp and landed on his head. Ever since, the accident has been used to highlight "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat" on ABC's "Wide World of Sports." Bogatej was hospitalized after the spill, but he recovered and now works in a foundry in Yugoslavia. Doug Wilson, a producer for ABC, interviewed him last year for a special anniversary edition of the show. "When we told him he's been on the program ever since 1970," says Wilson, "he couldn't believe it. He appears on television 130 times a year." Thomas Rogers in N.Y. Times, quoted in Dec, 1980, Reader's Digest.
The prize for the most useless weapon of all times goes to the Russians. They invented the "dog mine." The plan was to train the dogs to associate food with the undersides of tanks, in the hope that they would run hungrily beneath advancing Panzer divisions. Bombs were then strapped to the dogs' backs, which endangered the dogs to the point where no insurance company would look at them. Unfortunately, the dogs associated food solely with Russian tanks. The plan was begun the first day of the Russian involvement in World War II...and abandoned on day two. The dogs with bombs on their backs forced an entire Soviet division to retreat. Unknown.
In 1902, the poetry editor of Atlantic Monthly returned a stack of poems with this note, "Our magazine has no room for your vigorous verse." The poet was Robert Frost. In 1905, the University of Bern turned down a doctoral dissertation as "irrelevant and fanciful." The writer of that paper was Albert Einstein. In 1894 an English teacher noted on a teenager's report card, "A conspicuous lack of success." The student was Winston Churchill. Signs of the Times, March 1988, p. 12.
One ballplayer set the major league record for strikeouts with 1316. The same player set a record for five consecutive strikeouts in a World Series game. The holder of both records was the great slugger Babe Ruth. Unknown.
Napoleon Bonaparte graduated 42nd in a class of 58 at military school. E. Lucaire, Celebrity Trivia.
The great inventor Charles Kettering suggested that we must learn to fail intelligently. He said, "Once you've failed analyze the problem and find out why, because each failure is one more step leading up to the cathedral of success. The only time you don't want to fail is the last time you try." Here are three suggestions for turning failure into success: 1. honestly face defeat; never fake success. 2. Exploit the failure; don't waste it. Learn all you can from it; every bitter experience can teach us something. 3. Never use failure as an excuse for not trying again. You may not be able to reclaim the loss, undo the damage, or reverse the consequences, but you can make a new start--wiser, more sensitive, renewed by the Holy spirit, and more determined to do right. Charles Kettering.
General Mark Clark was one of the great heroes of WWII. He led the Salerno invasion that Winston Churchill said was "the most daring amphibious operation we have launched, or which, I think, has ever been launched on a similar scale in war." At the time Clark was promoted to Lt. General, he was the youngest man of that rank in the U.S. Army. He graduated from West Point in 1917. At the top of his class? Nope. He was 111th from the top in a class of 139! Even if you never earned a college degree, don't worry, you're in good company. Irving Berlin, for instance, only had two years of formal schooling. He never learned how to read music. When he composed his songs, he would hum the melody and a musical secretary would write down the notes. He became one of the greatest songwriters the country has ever known. Bits & Pieces, December 13, 1990.
It is said that Thomas Edison performed 50,000 experiments before he succeeded in producing a storage battery. We might assume the famous inventor would have had some serious doubts along the way. But when asked if he ever became discouraged working so long without results, Edison replied, "Results? Why, I know 50,000 things that won't work." Today in the Word, August, 1990.
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