《Sermon Illustrations (D~F)》(a compilation) table of contents
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- EFFECTIVE
- EFFORT
- ELDER No illustrations yet. ELECTION
- ELECTIONS
Statistics and Stuff15 famous people who never graduated from grade school: 1) Andrew Carnegie, U.S. industrialist and philanthropist 2) Charles Chaplin, British actor and film director 3) William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, American scout and showman 4) Noel Coward, British actor, playwright, and composer 5) Charles Dickens, British novelist 6) Isadora Duncan, U.S. dancer 7) Thomas Edison, U.S. inventor 8) Samuel Gompers, U.S. labor leader 9) Maxim Gorky, Russian writer 10) Claude Monet, French painter 11) Sean O'Casey, Irish playwright 12) Alfred E. Smith, U.S. politician 13) John Philip Sousa, U.S. bandleader and composer 14) Henry M. Stanley, British explorer 15) Mark Twain, U.S. humorist and writer From the Book of Lists. EFFECTIVECharles Francis Adams, 19th century political figure and diplomat, kept a diary. One day he entered: "Went fishing with my son today--a day wasted." His son, Brook Adams, also kept a diary, which is still in existence. On that same day, Brook Adams made this entry: "Went fishing with my father--the most wonderful day of my life!" The father thought he was wasting his time while fishing with his son, but his son saw it as an investment of time. The only way to tell the difference between wasting and investing is to know one's ultimate purpose in life and to judge accordingly. Silas Shotwell, in Homemade, September, 1987. 
Efficiency: doing things right. Effectiveness: doing the right things.
Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that can be counted counts. Dr. Charles Garfield.
Gadarene swine law: Merely because the group is in formation does not mean the group is on the right course.
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. Lin Yutang. EFFORTAbout the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age. Gloria Pitzer.
In 1986, a group of researchers published a study of Japanese mothers and mothers in Minneapolis. The mothers were asked to rank the most important things that a child needs to succeed academically. The answers tell a lot about the difference in our two cultures today. The mothers in Minneapolis chose "ability." The mothers in Japan said "effort." Richard H. Finan, State Senator from Ohio.
The female steamer duck can fly, but only about 1/4 of the males are able, and only before they eat! The rest are too heavy to get airborne. They use their wings as paddles and beat furiously across the surface of the water, never quite able to break into flight. Source Unknown. ELDERNo illustrations yet. ELECTIONNo illustrations yet.
Statistics and StuffThe elect are the whosoever wills, the non-elect are the whosoever won'ts. D.L. Moody.
"Elect" is always used of those who have already become believers, never of those who have not yet received the call. J. Huther, Ed., Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus, Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the N.T.
Paul begins here to extend as it were his hand to restrain the audacity of humans, in case they should clamor against God's judgments. We cannot by our own faculties examine the secrets of God, but we are admitted into a certain and clear knowledge of them by the grace of the Holy Spirit. And just as we ought to follow the guidance of the Spirit, so where He leaves us, we ought to stop there and fix our standing. "If anyone will seek to know more than what God has revealed, he shall be overwhelmed with the immeasurable brightness of inaccessible light. But we must bear in mind the distinction between the secret counsel of God and His will made known in Scripture. For though the whole doctrine of Scripture surpasses in its height the mind of man, yet an access to it is not closed against the faithful, who reverently follow the Spirit; but with regard to God's hidden counsel, the depth and height of it cannot be reached. John Calvin. ELECTIONSNo illustrations yet. EMBARRASSMENTWhile she was enjoying a transatlantic ocean trip, Billie Burke, the famous actress, noticed that a gentleman at the next table was suffering from a bad cold. "Are you uncomfortable?" she asked sympathetically. The man nodded. "I'll tell you just what to do for it," she offered. "Go back to your stateroom and drink lots of orange juice. Take two aspirins. Cover yourself with all the blankets you can find. Sweat the cold out. I know just what I'm talking about. I'm Billie Burke from Hollywood." The man smiled warmly and introduced himself in return. "Thanks," he said, "I'm Dr. Mayo from the Mayo clinic." Bits & Pieces, March 3, 1994, p. 24.
My sister, Becky, prepared a pasta dish for a dinner party she was giving. In her haste, however, she forgot to refrigerate the spaghetti sauce, and it sat on the counter all day. She was worried about spoilage, but it was too late to cook up another batch. She called the local Poison Control Center and voiced her concern. They advised Becky to boil the sauce again. That night, the phone rang during dinner, and a guest volunteered to answer it. Her face dropped as she called out, "It's the Poison Control Center. They want to know how the spaghetti sauce turned out." Contributed by Gene Solomon.
When my wife, Diana, and I met a new couple at church one Sunday, we stopped to introduce ourselves and to exchange pleasantries. We described the friendly neighborhood we lived in, and listened sympathetically as they lamented that theirs was just the opposite. Saying our good-byes, we got in our cars and drove home. As we approached our house, we were horrified to see that our new-found friends were pulling into the driveway next to ours. Contributed by Kent Eikenberry.
As we were leaving the lobby of a hotel in which we were staying, our three-year-old son looked down at the doormat with the hotel logo on it. "Hey!" he exclaimed. "That's on our towels at home." Contributed by Sandra Newman-Bentley, Reader's Digest, February, 1994, p. 50.
Author Leo F. Buscaglia, on the moment he'd most like to forget: "When speaking in public I perspire profusely, and thus always carry a few neatly pressed white handkerchiefs. Once, before a large audience, I had already used two handkerchiefs. I reached for number three and proceeded to wipe my forehead--only to find to my horror that I was using a pair of pressed white briefs, underwear that had inadvertently been piled among the handkerchiefs. With as much poise as I could muster, I completed the dabbing and quickly returned the underwear to my pocket. I often wonder how many viewers in the national audience shared the 'brief' embarrassment. Robert Morley, Pardon Me, But You're Eating My Doily!
Avery's observation: It does not matter if you fall down, as long as you pick up something from the floor when you get up.
28 members of a weight watching club on an outing in Australia suffered the exquisite embarrassment of having their bus sink up to its axles in a tarred parking lot. Source Unknown.
Sir Thomas Beecham, the British conductor, once saw a distinguished-looking woman in a hotel foyer. Believing he knew her, but unable to remember her name, he paused to talk with her. As the two chatted, he vaguely recollected that she had a brother. Hoping for a clue, he asked how her brother was and whether he was still working at the same job. "Oh, he's very well," she said, "And still king." Source Unknown.
At a ballet performance in Cape Town, South Africa, the music began and the curtain rose to reveal a workman on his knees, nailing down part of the set. He got up slowly, lifted his hands above his head in a graceful gesture, raised himself on his toes and pirouetted offstage. Source Unknown.
The wife of a retiring bishop was impressed when she and her husband left the home of their host, the Episcopal bishop of Panama, and found a crowd waiting near the front of the house. Having seen these people during a morning church service, she greeted each one present and thanked them for such a warm good-bye. Her enthusiasm waned, however, when a city bus appeared and the puzzled crowd climbed aboard. Source Unknown.
Steve Lyons will be remembered as the player who dropped his pants. He could be remembered as an outstanding infielder ... as the player who played every position for the Chicago White Sox ... as the guy who always dove into first base ... as a favorite of the fans who high fived the guy who caught the foul ball in the bleachers. He could be remembered as an above-average player who made it with an average ability. But he won't. He'll be remembered as the player who dropped his pants on July 16, 1990. The White Sox were playing the Tigers in Detroit. Lyons bunted and raced down the first-base line. He knew it was going to be tight, so he dove at the bag. Safe! The Tiger's pitcher disagreed. He and the umpire got into a shouting match, and Lyons stepped in to voice his opinion. Absorbed in the game and the debate, Lyons felt dirt trickling down the inside of his pants. Without missing a beat he dropped his britches, wiped away the dirt, and ... uh oh ...twenty thousand jaws hit the bleachers' floor. And, as you can imagine, the jokes began. Women behind the White Sox dugout waved dollar bills when he came onto the field. "No one," wrote one columnist, "had ever dropped his drawers on the field. Not Wally Moon. Not Blue Moon Odom. Not even Heinie Manush." Within twenty-four hours of the "exposure," he received more exposure than he'd gotten his entire career; seven live television and approximately twenty radio interviews. "We've got this pitcher, Melido Perex, who earlier this month pitched a no-hitter," Lyons stated, "and I'll guarantee you he didn't do two live television shots afterwards. I pull my pants down, and I do seven. Something's pretty skewed toward the zany in this game." Fortunately, for Steve, he was wearing sliding pants under his baseball pants. Otherwise the game would be rated "R" instead of "PG-13." Now, I don't know Steve Lyons. I'm not a White Sox fan. Nor am I normally appreciative of men who drop their pants in public. But I think Steve Lyons deserves a salute. I think anybody who dives into first base deserves a salute. How many guys do you see roaring down the baseline of life more concerned about getting a job done than they are about saving their necks? How often do you see people diving headfirst into anything? Too seldom, right? But when we do ... when we see a gutsy human throwing caution to the wind and taking a few risks ... ah, now that's a person worthy of a pat on the ... back. So here's to all the Steve Lyons in the world. Max Lucado, In the Eye of the Storm, Word Publishing, 1991, pp. 247-248.
In Ralph Emery's autobiography, Memories, the country- music D.J. and host of TV's "Nashville Now" relates one of his early experiences in radio: An exuberant man of the cloth came into the studio one day with his wife, another woman and a guitar with an electrical short in its amplifier. I could tell it was defective by the loud hum in his speaker. I walked from the control room into the studio to exchange pleasantries, and then assumed my position on my side of the glass separating the rooms. I raised the sound as they played their opening theme song and then said, "Here again is Brother So-and-So." These fundamentalist preachers, many self-proclaimed and well-meaning, were, however, loud and demonstrative. To escape the screaming, I would simply turn off the monitor in my control room. I couldn't hear any of his yelling, although I could see through the glass his jumping and straining. Every so often, I would raise my eyes from a newspaper and watch the Gospel pantomime. Suddenly I heard him yelling through his sheer lung power, "Oh-oh-oh-oh!" -- his face contorting. My God, he's having a seizure, I thought, and jumped to my feet. Then I noticed his thumb. The instant he had touched the steel string of his guitar and simultaneously reached for the steel microphone in front of him, he grounded himself because of the short in his amplifier. He was jumping and shaking at 110 volts shot through is torso. His moist palm was rigidly clamped to the microphone. The guy couldn't let go. He was a captive of voltage. Suddenly his wife raised her arm, and in karate fashion, hit his arm with all her force. The blow broke his grip from the charged microphone, but his painful yells had gone over the air. As calmly as I could, I said, "one moment please." With Tom Carter, Memories (Macmillan), Reader's Digest, June, 1992, p. 66. Directory: Topics Topics -> ES18 topics intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) Working Group I Topics -> Non-Governmental Organizations And Their Relation to Transboundary Water Resources Topics -> United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Mandatory hiv testing August 1996 Topics -> Policy Options for Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion Download 1.31 Mb. Share with your friends:
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