[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for July 22 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

The Job Christ Wants Done
 
Writing about another time and place, Leo Tolstoy said, "I beheld the misery, cold, hunger, humiliation of thousands of my fellow human beings ... I feel, and can never cease to feel, myself a partaker in a crime which is constantly being committed, so long as I have extra food while others have none, so long as I have two coats while there exists one person without any ... I must seek in my heart at every moment, with meekness and humility, some opportunity for doing the job Christ wants done." The job Christ wants done. He set the course; we are to do the rowing. 

David G. Rogne, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost, CSS Publishing Company, Inc. 

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Compassion and Motive
 
Jesus renewed people with the power of his compassion. I like the ancient legend about the monk who found a precious stone, a precious jewel. A short time later, the monk met a traveler, who said he was hungry and asked the monk if he would share some of his provisions. When the monk opened his bag, the traveler saw the precious stone and, on an impulse, asked the monk if he could have it. Amazingly, the monk gave the traveler the stone.
 
The traveler departed quickly, overjoyed with his new possession. However, a few days later, he came back, searching for the monk. He returned the stone to the monk and made a request: "Please give me something more valuable, more precious than this stone. Please give me that which enabled you to give me this precious stone!"
 
James W. Moore, Some Things Are Too Good Not To Be True, Dimensions, p. 101
 
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Restlessness
 
In this day when we are suppose to have so many devices to save time, I've never seen so many hurried and restless people! If the computer, the laptop, the cellular phone, and all of these other technological wonders are suppose to save us time, why do we have so little time for the things that matter?
 
It seems that with all we've accomplished, about all we have really added is speed and noise. We get there faster, but we don't know where we are going. And when we get there, we're out of breath.
 
I read one time about a man who swallowed an egg whole. He was afraid to move because he was afraid it would break. But he was afraid to sit still because he was afraid it would hatch. There are a lot of people like that today--so frenetic, so pressured they don't know which way to go. And the place where the pressure and restless often hit home is in the home.
 
Adrian Rogers, Ten Secrets for a Successful Family, Crossway Books, p. 71.
 
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Feeling the Suffering of Others
 
Flannery O'Connor, the insightful Roman Catholic writer, lifted up the Christian dimension when she wrote: "You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people's sufferings and not your own." The beginning of compassion involves becoming aware of the suffering of others. 
 
But it is not enough simply to see the suffering of others, we need to feel it. It is possible to see suffering, but not to feel it. Dewitt Jones tells about a photographer who walked down the street one day and came upon a man who was choking. "What a picture," he thought. "This says it all: A man, alone, in need. What a message!" He fumbled for his camera and light meter until the poor fellow who was choking realized that help was not forthcoming. He grabbed the photographer's arm and gasped, "I'm turning blue!" "That's all right," said the photographer, patting the fellow's hand, "I'm shooting color film." Just noticing suffering isn't enough. 

David G. Rogne, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost, CSS Publishing Company
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Unless a Man Has Pity
 
In his book The Human Comedy, William Saroyan noted: "Unless a man has pity, he is inhuman and not yet truly a man, for out of pity comes the balm which heals. Only good men weep. If a man has not yet wept at the world's pain, he is less than the dirt he walks upon, because dirt will nourish seed, root, stalk, leaf, and flower, but the spirit of a man without pity is barren and will bring forth nothing...." Good people feel the pain of others, and they weep. 

David G. Rogne, Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost, CSS Publishing Company 
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Avoiding Our Pain
 
Henri Nouwen wrote that "our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well. We not only bury our dead as if they were still alive, but we also bury our pains as if they were not really there. We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us...
 
The rest of this illustration, as well as many additional illustrations and sermons for the whole year, can be accessed at www.Sermons.com.


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