Sermon Illustration

Once, a thoughtless pilot got into an ill-equipped single-engine plane and took off. He didn't know much about how to handle the instruments--he just flew. The plane had no lights but he was flying up to a little country airstrip where he would land, he thought, before sunset. Unfortunately, he had strong winds against him and he didn't make it in time. The sun had already settled behind the western mountains and a haze was over the landing strip. Nearing the airstrip, he came down lower but he could not make out the boundaries of the runway. Panic seized him as he sensed he didn't have much fuel left. The runway was not equipped with lights, and he had no way of getting in touch with anyone. He began to circle. He realized one of those circling moments would be his last. He would crash to his death. Down on the ground, a man was sitting on his porch and his sensitive ears were bothered by the drone of the engine as he kept hearing the plane going around and around and arou...

The climactic event at Detroit's Cobo Hall exhibition of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus was the high-wire act of the Wallenda family, or the Flying Wallendas, as they were known. They were among the greatest tightwire walkers in all of circus history. One of their acts was walking the tightrope in the formation of a fourlevel pyramid. Four or five men formed the first level, two or three men made up the second level, two more were on the third, and finally a little girl topped the pyramid. Maintaining this four-level pyramid, they would make their way across the tightrope from one side of the arena to the other. It was incredible and unprecedented. They did it night after night, month after month around the world. One particular evening, as the show came to its conclusion, the four-level pyramid was about to start. The audience tensed in anticipation, sitting in total silence in the dark arena. The spotlights picked the Wallendas out of the air as they started moving ...

Mr. Alter's fifth-grade class at Lake Elementary School in Oceanside, California, included fourteen boys who had no hair. Only one, however, had no choice in the matter. Ian O'Gorman, undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, faced the prospect of having his hair fall out in clumps. So he had his head shaved. But then 13 of his classmates shaved their heads, so Ian wouldn't feel out of place. "If everybody has his head shaved, sometimes people don't know who's who," said 11-year-old Scott Sebelius in an Associated Press story (March 1994). "They don't know who has cancer, and who just shaved their head." Ten-year-old Kyle Hanslik started it all. He talked to some other boys, and before long they all trekked to the barber shop. "The last thing he would want is to not fit in," said Kyle. "We just wanted to make him feel better." Ian's father, Shawn, choked back tears as he talked about what the boys had done. He said simpl...