"A friend is someone who knows the song of your heart and sings it back to you when you have forgotten the words." – Unknown
"Give light and the people will find their own way." – Motto of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers
"Always take a job that is too big for you." [It will help you stretch and grow.] – Harry Emerson Fosdick
"Fear is the imaginary mountain that hides the horizon." – Rick Beneteau
"The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for the deliverance from fear. It is the storm within that endangers him, not the storm without." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
"He who builds according to every man's advice will have a crooked house." – Danish Proverb
"The best and most beautiful things cannot be seen or touched—they must be felt with the heart" – Helen Keller
"The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love." – William Wordsworth
A few weeks ago as our pastor was preaching the sermon, our Music Director was acting a little frantic and working hard to change a song we were scheduled to sing after the sermon was over.
Our pastor was preaching on the topic "What About Hell." The song that we were scheduled to sing was "Light the Fire."
Louis Pasteur, the pioneer of immunology, lived at a time when thousands of people died each year of rabies.
Pasteur had worked for years on a cure. Just as he was about to begin experimenting on himself, a nine-year-old, Joseph Meister, was bitten by a rabid dog. The boy's mother begged Pasteur to experiment on her son. Pasteur injected Joseph for ten days—and the boy lived. Decades later, of all things Pasteur could have had etched on his tombstone, he asked for three words: Joseph Meister Lived.
Thought: Our greatest legacy will be those who live eternally in heaven because of our efforts.
From his earliest days in politics, Lincoln had a critic who continually treated him with contempt, a man by the name of Edwin Stanton. Stanton would say to newspaper reporters that Lincoln was a "low cunning clown" and "the original gorilla."
He said it was ridiculous for explorers to go to Africa to capture a gorilla "when they could find one easily in Springfield, Illinois." Lincoln never responded to such slander, and never retaliated in the least. And when, as President, he needed a Secretary of War, he selected Edwin Stanton. When his friends asked why, Lincoln replied, "Because he is the best man for the job."
Years later, that fateful night came when an assassin's bullet murdered the president in a theater. Lincoln's body was carried off to another room. Stanton came, and looking down upon the silent, rugged, face of his dead President, he said through his tears, "There lies the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen." Stanton's animosity had finally been broken. How?
By Lincoln's patient, long-suffering, non-retaliatory love.
Dr. Dale Johnson from Sermon "How Is Your Love Life?" Cited on eSermons.com
Ben's very first duty as a new pastor was to conduct a funeral service for Albert, a man who died in his eighties. Since he didn't know the deceased personally, Ben paused from his sermon to invite members of the congregation to say a few kind words about Albert.
No one budged. So Ben said, "Many of you knew Albert for years. Surely someone can say something nice."
After an uncomfortable pause, a voice from the back of the room said, "Well, his brother was worse."
If you died tomorrow, what would people say about you? Would it make you proud of the way you lived and the choices you made?
There's an old saying: "If you want to know how to live your life, think about what you'd like people to say about you after you die ... and live backwards."
Thinking about the legacy we want to leave can help us keep our priorities straight. When the end is near, it's not likely that any of us will say, "I wish I would have spent more time at the office."
Unfortunately, many of us only begin to realize the value of the time we have after we have frittered much of it away in shallow ruts going nowhere important.
It's hard to think now what will really matter later. But doing so dramatically improves our chances of living a full and meaningful life with few regrets.
Knowing how we want to be remembered allows us to make a sort of strategic plan for our lives. And how much wiser would our choices be if we had the wisdom and discipline to regularly ask ourselves whether all the things we do and say are taking us where we want to be at the end? In a sense, we write our own eulogies by the choices we make everyday.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"It is God himself, in his mercy, who has given us this wonderful work [of telling his Good News to others] and so we never give up" (2 Corinthians 4:1, TLB).
It was during World War II when Great Britain's back was against the wall defending herself against seemingly overwhelming odds with the unrelenting onslaught of Hitler's military might and the unyielding bombing by the German Luftwaffe.
Winston Churchill was asked to address the students at Harrow School, the school I believe that Churchill himself had attended as a student. The following is the speech that he gave that day:
"Never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."¹
When it came to never giving up Churchill certainly practiced what he preached. His determined leadership helped win the war against Germany. And when it comes to God's work, let us all be like the Apostle Paul who said about his work for God: "It is God himself, in his mercy, who has given us this wonderful work [of telling his Good News to others] and so we never give up."
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you for the wonderful calling and privilege to be one of your witnesses during my life time. Help me to be an effective witness and never give up praying for lost loved ones, friends, and neighbors, and never give up letting my light shine for you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
1. Sir Winston Churchill, Speech, 1941, Harrow School.
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