Illustrations

Let’s pretend that your banker phoned you late last Friday and said he had some very good news. He told you that an anonymous donor who loves you very much has decided to deposit 86,400 pennies into your account each morning, starting the following Monday morning. That’s $864 a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.

He adds, “But there’s one stipulation; you must spend all that money that same day. No balance will be carried over to the next day.  Each evening the bank must cancel whatever sum you failed to use.”

In the book Time for God, there is a mathematically calculated schedule which compares a lifetime of “three-score years and ten” with the hours of a single day from seven o’clock in the morning until eleven o’clock at night.

If your age is:

Thousands of Tasmanian Devils have died from a rare type of cancer Devil Facial Tumor Disease. Scientists discovered that the cancer began in the mouth of a single devil and spread through the bites of that devil. Tasmanian Devils bite each other around the mouth very frequently, and this cancer spread through those bites. Over the course of several years, over forty percent of the Tasmanian Devil population has died because of this cancer.

A Netherlands-based electronics firm is creating a bracelet that will change color and flicker from yellow to red when a person’s emotions rise to unhealthy levels. It’s being developed chiefly for stock traders on European exchanges. When trading becomes too intense and the trader’s blood pressure rises, the device will issue a warning to, “Take a time-out, wind down or reconsider their actions,” said the manufacturer. The results, hopefully, will be beneficial to investors—to say nothing of the stock brokers themselves.

Certain ants have a passion for the sweet glandular substance given off by the caterpillar of a large blue butterfly. The ants can become so enthralled by the substance they carry the caterpillar into their nest with great delight. What they don’t realize is that the caterpillar gorges himself on the ant larva. Usually such a threat would be attacked by an army of ants and destroyed or repelled. However, because they enjoy the caterpillar’s tasty secretions so much, they become addicted to it. In so doing they are oblivious to the fact that their young are being destroyed!

When an English robber called Captain Thunderbolt escaped the law and moved to the eastern US in 1818, he began practicing medicine. He took on the name Dr. John Wilson. Often he wore three suits of clothes to escape recognition by making himself look larger and covering up a deformed leg. Just before the man died, he asked his friends to bury him without removing his clothes. But to prepare his body for proper burial, that request could not be honored. The mortician was surprised to find scars from wounds and a withered leg. A search of “Dr.

As a senior in high school, I had the opportunity to be the team captain for my high school basketball team. As time was expiring in an important district game ending the first half, my team had the ball, and we called a play to get a basket at the end of the half. As the point guard my job was to deliver the ball where it needed to be. I failed. A defender moved up and knocked the ball away and my team lost the opportunity. At half time my usually laid back coach got in my face and asked me, “Captain, Senior, Point Guard, are all of those true?”

I answered, “Yes sir.”

A young man in Bible college fell asleep during class. As he was sleeping, a friend of the young man suddenly shook him and earnestly whispered, “Hey, he just asked you to pray!” The sleeping man, thinking he had just been called on to pray, jumped to his feet and began his prayer while still partly asleep, interrupting the teacher’s lesson. The student finished his prayer and sat down. The teacher, unflustered, thanked the student and continued with the lesson.

Source: Unknown

A woman was interviewed by reporters on her 102^nd birthday. When asked about the benefits of living past the century mark, she answered, “No peer pressure!”

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

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

After school one day, a first-grade boy said, “Mom, the teacher asked me today if I have any brothers or sisters who will be coming to school.” The boy’s mother replied, “That’s nice of her to take such an interest, Dear. What did she say when you told her you are an only child?”

“She just said, ‘What a relief!’”

Source: Unknown

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College