Proper 25
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VI, Cycle C
Object:
COMMENTARY ON THE LESSONS
Lesson 1: Joel 2:23-32 (C)
Joel was no pacifist. Writing around 400 B.C., his main emphasis was thirst for revenge. A bit of apocalypticism concludes this section. I suppose we could infer some assurance from Joel that God will see that everything goes better from now on. However, it didn't. What does happen is that God is accessible to the believer and that God does bring renewal and restoration to those who believe. But this is not a passage I would select as the basis for a sermon -- one of my most admired preachers did do a great job with verses 28 and 29 once -- so we'll pass along to the New Testament.
Lesson 1: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-19 (RC)
Lesson 1: Jeremiah 14:(1-6) 7-10, 19-22 (E)
Jeremiah here bemoans his sense of abandonment by God.
Lesson 2: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 (C, RC, E)
This is quite a profound promise. The writer -- Paul? -- feels assured that "the Lord will rescue me from all evil and take me safely into his heavenly Kingdom." Why? Because he has done his best in the race of life. He has "run the full distance" and "kept the faith." Now he fully anticipates the prize of victory. There's a sermon here. We are all entered in the race referred to here. Of course today, in this era of frantic search for success in which so many are engaged, the metaphor has some limitations. On the other hand, we all understand sports analogies. Those who hang in there, who are faithful to their true beliefs, who trust God even when the going is tough and the odds seem against us, will win a greater victory than they may suppose. One might rent the movie Chariots Of Fire for a wonderful illustration.
Gospel: Luke 18:9-14 (C, RC, E)
This passage really addresses itself to our hypocrisy, the ease with which we disapprove that person for one thing or another, while excusing ourselves for our little foibles which like as not make us more human and therefore, truth to tell, more lovable (we would like to think). I confess this is true of me from time to time. Just recently a friend did something which cost me a cool hundred dollars because of his mistake. I forgave him. So far so good. But just the other day, I told a group of people what my friend had done. Of course I clothed my bit of gossip in "I don't mean to malign my friend, you understand" kind of disclaimers. No matter. I gossiped, and I put a friend down. And, here's the sad truth: when I hear someone else do that sort of thing, I am shocked at such unkindness.
In a sermon, I would try to point to this tendency most of us possess. This calls for some self-criticism. That, of course, can get out of hand in some people. Poor self-esteem, inordinate guilt, lost self-confidence, those sorts of things. But at the same time, true Christians must regularly do some self-searching and see these things in ourselves.
Another facet to this is the implied call to be forgiving of other people when they act selfishly. There's a limit, of course. The worker at the next table who is swiping envelopes and fountain pens needs to be held accountable. But judgmentalism is unloving, and when I see some flaw in a friend, I am to remind myself that I don't win any prizes either. Perhaps the best way to encourage change in others is to strive for laudable conduct on one's own part.
SERMON SUGGESTIONS
Title: "Keeping On Keeping On"
Text: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Theme: The old cliche -- "When the going gets tough the tough get going" -- is a healthy maxim. The old Texas rangers put it this way: "Little man beat a big man every time if the little man keep a'comin'." This is something we all must learn in life. It applies to our religious faith. But it applies in all aspects of our existence. Awareness of this probably starts about the time a child in school realizes he can't get the stuff he's supposed to learn in class. Most just cop out. Down the road, they may wonder why they can't find a good job. The child who says, "I'm going to understand this or know the reason why," will probably succeed at other things as well. A young lady of my acquaintance just finished summer school at her university. It was a class in higher math which she doesn't especially understand. Early on, her professor called her in and warned her that she didn't have the academic background for this level of math. She was terribly distraught, but she required the credit to get her degree which had been held up until she completed this course. So, she found a tutor. While her friends were out partying in the evenings, she was poring over her math book, trying to get its complicated concepts into her head. Conclusion? She received the highest grade in the class, so was awarded her degree -- magna cum laude.
1. Life isn't easy. It just isn't in the cards for most of us to find an easy way through life. Hard work is essential if I am to succeed at anything worth doing. Any successful athlete can tell us this.
2. Hard work is the antidote. My wife's sister has twin sons on the swim team in high school. They get up every morning in time to be at swim practice at 5 a.m. You ought to see the shoulders on those boys. There goes the old social life, since they're in bed by 9:30 or so. But one just won the sectional title in the 500-meter freestyle. Those early hours are part of the price. And incidentally, you can please God. I say, "can" because success of the right kind makes us better able to fulfill whatever mission we have been given.
3. Hard work prepares us for our life's mission. I visited my physician the other day. On his wall are several documents. One reveals that he is a Phi Beta Kappa. Another that he graduated first in his class at medical school. A third that he was voted best resident during his hospital residency. He also is a good Methodist (that's not an oxymoron, my Presbyterian friends) and cares about me. But my reason for confidence is that he obviously devoted himself to his preparation for his medical career. (This is also true of preaching.)
Title: "What About Yourself?"
Text: Luke 18:9-14
Theme: Jesus was obviously jabbing the Pharisees for their preoccupation with rules and regulations, and their disregard for motives and good intentions. His obvious point was that judgmentalism is unkind and displeasing to God, no matter how exalted one's own conduct. I don't think Jesus meant to find fault with one man's obedience to the religious and cultural rules of the day. We must, after all, allow for the fact that this Pharisee was only being true to the things he had been taught since childhood. Don't we all try to do that? Actually, this man was a hypothetical person, imagined by Jesus to illustrate the worst sort of "goodness," what Mark Twain called "good in the worst sense of the word." And the other fellow, the tax collector, he too was a classic figure of one who has done wrong, but knows this and is in the process of re-creation through repentance.
In essence, Jesus has held before us examples of the two forces which operate in all of us: our self-righteous tendency, as opposed to the best within us, the sometimes realization that we too do wrong and have no right to judge others. There's no way I can completely overcome my judgmental tendencies. I'll always feel a twinge of anger when a car goes by with loud booming base speakers polluting the neighborhood, even though I do like teenagers. I'll always be offended when I see someone chew with their mouth open in a restaurant. That's because Mother hammered that at us until we thought such poor manners to rank alongside bank robbery. But I can also take a closer look at some of my own irritating little habits, and I can then do two things. One, I can go to work on my own faults and try to lessen their effect on others. Second, I can keep reminding myself that not everyone sees the world as I do, I'm not the king of creation, and God wants us all to live together in as much harmony as we can create. He summons me to live in peace and harmony with the people around me.
1. The Pharisee represents conventional morality. This has its obvious place. The things we learned in kindergarten are correct, and we should live by them. But this man also reflects the easy tendency to judgmentalism by those who see themselves as loyal practitioners of conventional morality.
2. The tax collector represents repentance. By this means we are brought into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We can imagine a person going through life, adhering to all the rules of community and church. We can imagine that person winning recognition as an admirable member of the community. But God sees into the human heart and declares us all to have fallen short of his hopes for us. Paul said it: "Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence" (Romans 3:23). Just a few verses beyond the presently considered passage we find Jesus confronting us with this lofty standard: "No one is good except God alone." He even excluded himself, though we would argue with that. The point, though, is that each of us must look beyond our own sense of being in the right and examine ourselves with brutal, though hopefully not neurotic, honesty to see ourselves in such clarity. That will produce remorse, then a desire to make restitution, then determination to do better, and finally, with God's help, a genuine improvement in our attitudes.
3. Only thus is peace possible. It may be trivial to worry about booming speakers and poor table manners. But when we apply this to our attitudes toward people of differing races, differing social position, differing economic state, differing physical attributes, differing speech patterns, and all the other differences which so easily divide us, we discover that only by such ruthless searching of our own hearts and only by the application of love as received from God through Jesus Christ can we ever have something approaching peace on earth. Such honesty produces humility. And of that Jesus promised, "Everyone who humbles himself will be made great."
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
C. S. Lewis once observed that we can get some idea of the wonder of the Incarnation if we imagine ourselves looking at a bunch of slugs at the bottom of a muddy creek and deciding to become like them so we could save them.
Reinhold Niebuhr said that the cross of Jesus showed the inevitable fate of perfect love without perfect power.
____________
When my daughter was in high school, she was very active in athletic and social activities. Her mother and I, of course, kept a wary eye on her comings and goings, just as any wise parents would do. For her part, our daughter was a very responsible little girl. But one night I was to pick her up after she attended a football game. We were to meet at a previously agreed-upon location, and she was not there at the time she promised. I waited fifteen or so minutes, then began to search for her. As the crowd thinned out, then disappeared, I became extremely worried. But finally, I saw her in the distance, talking to a friend. Now I was angry. I had been frantic for half an hour, and she was merely ignoring her promise. Or so it seemed. But when I approached her, she expressed her own concern, worried as to what had happened to me. We finally realized that she had misunderstood my instructions, but had dutifully arrived where she thought she was to be, and on time. So I was no longer upset with her because she had done what she sincerely believed was right, even though it was actually wrong. I got to thinking, that's how it will be with us and God. We may be wrong in some of our theology, and some of our ideas about right and wrong. But if we sincerely try to understand what God wants, and if we are faithful to what we believe to be right, God will surely accept that as having been faithful.
____________
O. Henry wrote a story about a young gunman who learned of a farm family whose son had run away many years ago. He decided that he would present himself as that departed son in the hope that he could take their money. He began the masquerade, and the family, not having seen their son for many years, and therefore unable to recognize him, accepted the gunman as their own son. However, the gunman had never before experienced the kind of love he received in that home. It changed him. He abandoned his original plan and, as the story ends, he chose to remain as their "son" and devote himself to their happiness for the years that remained to them.
____________
Do you remember that classic Peanuts scene where Lucy offers to hold the football in place so Charlie Brown can kick a field goal? And Charlie knows perfectly well that in the past, Lucy has always pulled the ball away at the last instant, causing Charlie to fall flat on his back. So this time, Charlie refuses to trust Lucy. But Lucy says to Charlie that this time she will not pull the ball away. "I give you my bonded word," Lucy says. So Charlie says, "All right. I'll trust you ... I have an undying faith in human nature."
Now Charlie gets set, Lucy places the ball down, Charlie runs, kicks, and as he does so, Lucy pulls the ball away and Charlie falls -- whump -- flat on his back. Then Lucy walks over to Charlie with a malicious look on her face, stares down at Charlie, and says, "Charlie Brown, your faith in human nature is an inspiration to all young people."
____________
One day I took my family to the Art Institute in Chicago. A group of young art students had drawn their chairs in a semi-circle around a famous masterpiece and were each making an effort to copy the painting. One or two were doing a very good job. Some others were, well, doing better than I could have done, and one or two were clearly born to be something other than artists. But each was doing the best he or she could do. My mind went back to that as I thought about the Beatitudes. What those really do is describe Jesus. God no more expects me to successfully emulate those Beatitudes than we might have expected one of the those art students to, in fact, perfectly reproduce that masterpiece before them. Let them, however, do their very best. So with us. We are to strive to be as nearly like those splendid standards as we are able. God will accept our best effort and forgive the rest.
____________
Coventry Patmore wrote of a father who became angry with his little boy one evening and sent him to bed without his supper. But later, Dad felt badly about his treatment of his son. He went in and sat by the child's bed:
My little son, who looked through thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in a quiet, grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobeyed,
I struck him and dismissed
With harsh words, and unkissed,
His mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darkened eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet. And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-veined stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
____________
This one sounds a bit fake, but it's absolutely true. Many years ago, back when girls wore frilly dresses and let men do all the heavy lifting, a young couple went by rowboat to an island for a picnic. While the young lady sat back enjoying the pleasant ride, the young man struggled to row the boat to the distant island. Then, as they drew near, the young lady sadly admitted that she had left the ice cream on the far shore, and would he be a doll and go back for it. Depositing his date on the island, the young man then rowed back to the shore from which they had departed and rescued the ice cream. But as he again started to row toward the island, the thought occurred to him: "Why doesn't someone figure out a way to hang a motor on the back of a boat so you don't have to row?" He then stopped where he was, found a piece of paper and a pencil and began to make some drawings of his sudden idea. Norman Vincent Peale, who reported this story, observed that the next time you take a girl on a boat trip, you may want to give thanks to this young man from long ago. His name was Evinrude. (Difficulties are often the mother of invention.)
____________
Eddie Rickenbacker was a World War I hero-ace, a daredevil race driver, president of a major airlines, president of the Indianapolis 500 Speedway, and equally famous for his exploits in World War II. One day he was in a plane that crashed in Atlanta, leaving several dead. Medics believed him to be dead, or nearly so, and turned away to care for other survivors. Finally, realizing he was still alive, Rickenbacker was moved to a hospital where he was still believed to be so critically injured he could probably not survive. A few nights later, as a nurse sat in the room, the radio playing, he heard Walter Winchell on the radio announce that Eddie Rickenbacker was so badly injured that it was believed he would not survive. Eddie got mad. He reached over, picked up the radio, and smashed it against the wall. He was furious. He was also just days away from getting up and walking out of the hospital. Eddie Rickenbacker was a fighter and a man of deep religious faith and deep faith in himself. He showed what a person can do when one truly believes.
____________
Psalm Of The Day
Psalm 65 -- "Praise is due to thee, O God."
Prayer Of The Day
Dear God, we do pray for healthy minds, able on the one hand to examine our hearts with faithful honesty to discover any faults which therein lie, yet able, too, to walk in confidence in the things we do, that we may worthily exemplify the name of Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.
Lesson 1: Joel 2:23-32 (C)
Joel was no pacifist. Writing around 400 B.C., his main emphasis was thirst for revenge. A bit of apocalypticism concludes this section. I suppose we could infer some assurance from Joel that God will see that everything goes better from now on. However, it didn't. What does happen is that God is accessible to the believer and that God does bring renewal and restoration to those who believe. But this is not a passage I would select as the basis for a sermon -- one of my most admired preachers did do a great job with verses 28 and 29 once -- so we'll pass along to the New Testament.
Lesson 1: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-19 (RC)
Lesson 1: Jeremiah 14:(1-6) 7-10, 19-22 (E)
Jeremiah here bemoans his sense of abandonment by God.
Lesson 2: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 (C, RC, E)
This is quite a profound promise. The writer -- Paul? -- feels assured that "the Lord will rescue me from all evil and take me safely into his heavenly Kingdom." Why? Because he has done his best in the race of life. He has "run the full distance" and "kept the faith." Now he fully anticipates the prize of victory. There's a sermon here. We are all entered in the race referred to here. Of course today, in this era of frantic search for success in which so many are engaged, the metaphor has some limitations. On the other hand, we all understand sports analogies. Those who hang in there, who are faithful to their true beliefs, who trust God even when the going is tough and the odds seem against us, will win a greater victory than they may suppose. One might rent the movie Chariots Of Fire for a wonderful illustration.
Gospel: Luke 18:9-14 (C, RC, E)
This passage really addresses itself to our hypocrisy, the ease with which we disapprove that person for one thing or another, while excusing ourselves for our little foibles which like as not make us more human and therefore, truth to tell, more lovable (we would like to think). I confess this is true of me from time to time. Just recently a friend did something which cost me a cool hundred dollars because of his mistake. I forgave him. So far so good. But just the other day, I told a group of people what my friend had done. Of course I clothed my bit of gossip in "I don't mean to malign my friend, you understand" kind of disclaimers. No matter. I gossiped, and I put a friend down. And, here's the sad truth: when I hear someone else do that sort of thing, I am shocked at such unkindness.
In a sermon, I would try to point to this tendency most of us possess. This calls for some self-criticism. That, of course, can get out of hand in some people. Poor self-esteem, inordinate guilt, lost self-confidence, those sorts of things. But at the same time, true Christians must regularly do some self-searching and see these things in ourselves.
Another facet to this is the implied call to be forgiving of other people when they act selfishly. There's a limit, of course. The worker at the next table who is swiping envelopes and fountain pens needs to be held accountable. But judgmentalism is unloving, and when I see some flaw in a friend, I am to remind myself that I don't win any prizes either. Perhaps the best way to encourage change in others is to strive for laudable conduct on one's own part.
SERMON SUGGESTIONS
Title: "Keeping On Keeping On"
Text: 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Theme: The old cliche -- "When the going gets tough the tough get going" -- is a healthy maxim. The old Texas rangers put it this way: "Little man beat a big man every time if the little man keep a'comin'." This is something we all must learn in life. It applies to our religious faith. But it applies in all aspects of our existence. Awareness of this probably starts about the time a child in school realizes he can't get the stuff he's supposed to learn in class. Most just cop out. Down the road, they may wonder why they can't find a good job. The child who says, "I'm going to understand this or know the reason why," will probably succeed at other things as well. A young lady of my acquaintance just finished summer school at her university. It was a class in higher math which she doesn't especially understand. Early on, her professor called her in and warned her that she didn't have the academic background for this level of math. She was terribly distraught, but she required the credit to get her degree which had been held up until she completed this course. So, she found a tutor. While her friends were out partying in the evenings, she was poring over her math book, trying to get its complicated concepts into her head. Conclusion? She received the highest grade in the class, so was awarded her degree -- magna cum laude.
1. Life isn't easy. It just isn't in the cards for most of us to find an easy way through life. Hard work is essential if I am to succeed at anything worth doing. Any successful athlete can tell us this.
2. Hard work is the antidote. My wife's sister has twin sons on the swim team in high school. They get up every morning in time to be at swim practice at 5 a.m. You ought to see the shoulders on those boys. There goes the old social life, since they're in bed by 9:30 or so. But one just won the sectional title in the 500-meter freestyle. Those early hours are part of the price. And incidentally, you can please God. I say, "can" because success of the right kind makes us better able to fulfill whatever mission we have been given.
3. Hard work prepares us for our life's mission. I visited my physician the other day. On his wall are several documents. One reveals that he is a Phi Beta Kappa. Another that he graduated first in his class at medical school. A third that he was voted best resident during his hospital residency. He also is a good Methodist (that's not an oxymoron, my Presbyterian friends) and cares about me. But my reason for confidence is that he obviously devoted himself to his preparation for his medical career. (This is also true of preaching.)
Title: "What About Yourself?"
Text: Luke 18:9-14
Theme: Jesus was obviously jabbing the Pharisees for their preoccupation with rules and regulations, and their disregard for motives and good intentions. His obvious point was that judgmentalism is unkind and displeasing to God, no matter how exalted one's own conduct. I don't think Jesus meant to find fault with one man's obedience to the religious and cultural rules of the day. We must, after all, allow for the fact that this Pharisee was only being true to the things he had been taught since childhood. Don't we all try to do that? Actually, this man was a hypothetical person, imagined by Jesus to illustrate the worst sort of "goodness," what Mark Twain called "good in the worst sense of the word." And the other fellow, the tax collector, he too was a classic figure of one who has done wrong, but knows this and is in the process of re-creation through repentance.
In essence, Jesus has held before us examples of the two forces which operate in all of us: our self-righteous tendency, as opposed to the best within us, the sometimes realization that we too do wrong and have no right to judge others. There's no way I can completely overcome my judgmental tendencies. I'll always feel a twinge of anger when a car goes by with loud booming base speakers polluting the neighborhood, even though I do like teenagers. I'll always be offended when I see someone chew with their mouth open in a restaurant. That's because Mother hammered that at us until we thought such poor manners to rank alongside bank robbery. But I can also take a closer look at some of my own irritating little habits, and I can then do two things. One, I can go to work on my own faults and try to lessen their effect on others. Second, I can keep reminding myself that not everyone sees the world as I do, I'm not the king of creation, and God wants us all to live together in as much harmony as we can create. He summons me to live in peace and harmony with the people around me.
1. The Pharisee represents conventional morality. This has its obvious place. The things we learned in kindergarten are correct, and we should live by them. But this man also reflects the easy tendency to judgmentalism by those who see themselves as loyal practitioners of conventional morality.
2. The tax collector represents repentance. By this means we are brought into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. We can imagine a person going through life, adhering to all the rules of community and church. We can imagine that person winning recognition as an admirable member of the community. But God sees into the human heart and declares us all to have fallen short of his hopes for us. Paul said it: "Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence" (Romans 3:23). Just a few verses beyond the presently considered passage we find Jesus confronting us with this lofty standard: "No one is good except God alone." He even excluded himself, though we would argue with that. The point, though, is that each of us must look beyond our own sense of being in the right and examine ourselves with brutal, though hopefully not neurotic, honesty to see ourselves in such clarity. That will produce remorse, then a desire to make restitution, then determination to do better, and finally, with God's help, a genuine improvement in our attitudes.
3. Only thus is peace possible. It may be trivial to worry about booming speakers and poor table manners. But when we apply this to our attitudes toward people of differing races, differing social position, differing economic state, differing physical attributes, differing speech patterns, and all the other differences which so easily divide us, we discover that only by such ruthless searching of our own hearts and only by the application of love as received from God through Jesus Christ can we ever have something approaching peace on earth. Such honesty produces humility. And of that Jesus promised, "Everyone who humbles himself will be made great."
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
C. S. Lewis once observed that we can get some idea of the wonder of the Incarnation if we imagine ourselves looking at a bunch of slugs at the bottom of a muddy creek and deciding to become like them so we could save them.
Reinhold Niebuhr said that the cross of Jesus showed the inevitable fate of perfect love without perfect power.
____________
When my daughter was in high school, she was very active in athletic and social activities. Her mother and I, of course, kept a wary eye on her comings and goings, just as any wise parents would do. For her part, our daughter was a very responsible little girl. But one night I was to pick her up after she attended a football game. We were to meet at a previously agreed-upon location, and she was not there at the time she promised. I waited fifteen or so minutes, then began to search for her. As the crowd thinned out, then disappeared, I became extremely worried. But finally, I saw her in the distance, talking to a friend. Now I was angry. I had been frantic for half an hour, and she was merely ignoring her promise. Or so it seemed. But when I approached her, she expressed her own concern, worried as to what had happened to me. We finally realized that she had misunderstood my instructions, but had dutifully arrived where she thought she was to be, and on time. So I was no longer upset with her because she had done what she sincerely believed was right, even though it was actually wrong. I got to thinking, that's how it will be with us and God. We may be wrong in some of our theology, and some of our ideas about right and wrong. But if we sincerely try to understand what God wants, and if we are faithful to what we believe to be right, God will surely accept that as having been faithful.
____________
O. Henry wrote a story about a young gunman who learned of a farm family whose son had run away many years ago. He decided that he would present himself as that departed son in the hope that he could take their money. He began the masquerade, and the family, not having seen their son for many years, and therefore unable to recognize him, accepted the gunman as their own son. However, the gunman had never before experienced the kind of love he received in that home. It changed him. He abandoned his original plan and, as the story ends, he chose to remain as their "son" and devote himself to their happiness for the years that remained to them.
____________
Do you remember that classic Peanuts scene where Lucy offers to hold the football in place so Charlie Brown can kick a field goal? And Charlie knows perfectly well that in the past, Lucy has always pulled the ball away at the last instant, causing Charlie to fall flat on his back. So this time, Charlie refuses to trust Lucy. But Lucy says to Charlie that this time she will not pull the ball away. "I give you my bonded word," Lucy says. So Charlie says, "All right. I'll trust you ... I have an undying faith in human nature."
Now Charlie gets set, Lucy places the ball down, Charlie runs, kicks, and as he does so, Lucy pulls the ball away and Charlie falls -- whump -- flat on his back. Then Lucy walks over to Charlie with a malicious look on her face, stares down at Charlie, and says, "Charlie Brown, your faith in human nature is an inspiration to all young people."
____________
One day I took my family to the Art Institute in Chicago. A group of young art students had drawn their chairs in a semi-circle around a famous masterpiece and were each making an effort to copy the painting. One or two were doing a very good job. Some others were, well, doing better than I could have done, and one or two were clearly born to be something other than artists. But each was doing the best he or she could do. My mind went back to that as I thought about the Beatitudes. What those really do is describe Jesus. God no more expects me to successfully emulate those Beatitudes than we might have expected one of the those art students to, in fact, perfectly reproduce that masterpiece before them. Let them, however, do their very best. So with us. We are to strive to be as nearly like those splendid standards as we are able. God will accept our best effort and forgive the rest.
____________
Coventry Patmore wrote of a father who became angry with his little boy one evening and sent him to bed without his supper. But later, Dad felt badly about his treatment of his son. He went in and sat by the child's bed:
My little son, who looked through thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in a quiet, grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobeyed,
I struck him and dismissed
With harsh words, and unkissed,
His mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darkened eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet. And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-veined stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
____________
This one sounds a bit fake, but it's absolutely true. Many years ago, back when girls wore frilly dresses and let men do all the heavy lifting, a young couple went by rowboat to an island for a picnic. While the young lady sat back enjoying the pleasant ride, the young man struggled to row the boat to the distant island. Then, as they drew near, the young lady sadly admitted that she had left the ice cream on the far shore, and would he be a doll and go back for it. Depositing his date on the island, the young man then rowed back to the shore from which they had departed and rescued the ice cream. But as he again started to row toward the island, the thought occurred to him: "Why doesn't someone figure out a way to hang a motor on the back of a boat so you don't have to row?" He then stopped where he was, found a piece of paper and a pencil and began to make some drawings of his sudden idea. Norman Vincent Peale, who reported this story, observed that the next time you take a girl on a boat trip, you may want to give thanks to this young man from long ago. His name was Evinrude. (Difficulties are often the mother of invention.)
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Eddie Rickenbacker was a World War I hero-ace, a daredevil race driver, president of a major airlines, president of the Indianapolis 500 Speedway, and equally famous for his exploits in World War II. One day he was in a plane that crashed in Atlanta, leaving several dead. Medics believed him to be dead, or nearly so, and turned away to care for other survivors. Finally, realizing he was still alive, Rickenbacker was moved to a hospital where he was still believed to be so critically injured he could probably not survive. A few nights later, as a nurse sat in the room, the radio playing, he heard Walter Winchell on the radio announce that Eddie Rickenbacker was so badly injured that it was believed he would not survive. Eddie got mad. He reached over, picked up the radio, and smashed it against the wall. He was furious. He was also just days away from getting up and walking out of the hospital. Eddie Rickenbacker was a fighter and a man of deep religious faith and deep faith in himself. He showed what a person can do when one truly believes.
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Psalm Of The Day
Psalm 65 -- "Praise is due to thee, O God."
Prayer Of The Day
Dear God, we do pray for healthy minds, able on the one hand to examine our hearts with faithful honesty to discover any faults which therein lie, yet able, too, to walk in confidence in the things we do, that we may worthily exemplify the name of Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.
