Illustrations

When Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, a reporter asked them, “To what do you attribute your fifty years of successful married life?”

“The formula,” said Mr. Ford, “is the same formula I have always used in making cars—just stick to one model.”

Source: Walking Through Your Bible with H.M.S. Richards, H.M.S. Richards

The story is told that Andrew Jackson’s boyhood friends just couldn’t understand how he became a famous general and then the President of the United States. They knew of other men who had greater talent but who never succeeded. One of Jackson’s friends said, “Why, Jim Brown, who lived right down the pike from Jackson, was not only smarter but he could throw Andy three times out of four in a wrestling match. But look where Andy is now.”

Another friend responded, “How did there happen to be a fourth time? Didn’t they usually say three times and out?”

In 1995 the nation was stunned when news broke that an elderly woman named Oseola McCarty had donated $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi for their scholarship fund. This eighty-seven-year-old woman had been forced to drop out of school in the sixth grade to care for her family. For more than sixty years she made a living washing clothes for hire in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, saving as much as she could from her meager pay.

On February 3, 1943, a troop ship named The Dorchester was carrying more than nine hundred soldiers and military personnel across the North Atlantic. A German U-boat spotted the convoy and fired three torpedoes at the ship. Only one struck the target, but the blast below the waterline fatally damaged the ship. In the cold darkness, the crew was ordered to abandon ship. There were not enough lifeboats for all the men, nor were there enough life jackets.

4 years of age: My mommy can do anything!

8 years of age: My mom knows a whole lot!

12 years of age: My mother doesn’t really know quite everything.

14 years of age: Naturally, Mother doesn’t know that either.

16 years of age: Mother? She’s hopelessly old-fashioned.

18 years of age: That old woman? She’s way out of date!

25 years of age: Well, she might know a little bit about it.

35 years of age: Before we decide, let’s get Mom’s opinion.

45 years of age: I wonder what Mom would have thought about it?

President Abraham Lincoln once summoned an Army surgeon to the White House. The major assumed that he was to be commended for some exceptional work. During the conversation Mr. Lincoln asked the major about his widowed mother. “She is doing fine,” he responded.

“How do you know?” asked Lincoln. “You haven’t written her, but she has written me.” Lincoln continued, “She thinks that you are dead, and she is asking that a special effort be made to return your body.”

Mrs. Jones relaxed by reading her Bible each day. After observing this habit for several years, her 4-year-old daughter asked, “Aren’t you ever going to get finished reading that book?”

Source: 1001 Quotes, Illustrations, and Humorous Stories for Preachers, Teachers, and Writers, Edward K. Rowell

Somebody said that a child is carried in its mother’s womb for nine months.
Somebody does not know that a child is carried in its mother’s heart forever.

Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you’ve had a baby.
Somebody doesn’t know that once you’re a mother, normal is history.

Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct.
Somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.

Somebody said being a mother is boring.
Somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver’s permit.

A mother took her young son shopping. After a day in the stores, a clerk handed the little boy a lollipop. “What do you say?” the mother said to the boy, to which he replied, “Charge it!”

Source: Unknown

“Praying mothers are America’s greatest assets.”—Theodore Roosevelt

“A mother’s lap is the best place from which to launch a life.”—Sarah Hupp

“She’s someone who will listen to your problems until you are bored with them.”—Ellen Goodman

“No one is poor who had a godly mother.”—Abraham Lincoln

“Together is the most beautiful word in the dictionary outside of the word mother.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson (when speaking about the benefits of unity)