To Illustrate - Christianity Today

COMMITMENT

Author and business leader Fred Smith writes: One of my treasured memories comes from a doughnut shop in Grand Saline, Texas. There was a young farm couple sitting at the table next to mine. He was wearing overalls and she a gingham dress. After finishing their doughnuts, he got up to pay the bill, and I noticed she didn’t get up to follow him.

But then he came back and stood in front of her. She put her arms around his neck, and he lifted her up, revealing that she was wearing a full-body brace. He lifted her out of her chair and backed out the front door to the pickup truck, with her hanging from his neck.

As he gently put her into the truck, everyone in the shop watched. No one said anything until a waitress remarked, almost reverently, “He took his vows seriously.”

STUBBORNNESS

Between two farms near Valleyview, Alberta, you can find two parallel fences, only two feet apart, running for a half mile.

Why are there two fences when one would do?

Two farmers, Paul and Oscar, had a disagreement that erupted into a feud. Paul wanted to build a fence between their land and split the cost, but Oscar was unwilling to contribute. Since he wanted to keep cattle on his land, Paul went ahead and built the fence anyway.

After the fence was completed, Oscar said to Paul, “I see we have a fence.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?” Paul replied. “I got the property line surveyed and built the fence two feet into my land. That means some of my land is outside the fence. And if any of your cows sets foot on my land, I’ll shoot it.”

Oscar knew Paul wasn’t joking, so when he eventually decided to use the land adjoining Paul’s for pasture, he was forced to build another fence, two feet away.

Oscar and Paul are both gone now, but their double fence stands as a monument to the high price we pay for stubbornness.

– Daren Wride

Valleyview, Alberta

LOVE

In One Church from the Fence, Wes Seelinger writes: “I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room … watching with anguished people … listening to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again? How do you live without your companion of thirty years?

“The intensive care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can’t do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of race and class melt away. A person is a father first, a black man second. The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else.

“In the intensive care waiting room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor’s next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.”

Long before we’re in the intensive care waiting room maybe we can learn to live like that.

– Hugh Duncan

Boise, Idaho

ANGER

In his autobiography, Number 1, Billy Martin told about hunting in Texas with Mickey Mantle. Mickey had a friend who would let them hunt on his ranch. When they reached the ranch, Mickey told Billy to wait in the car while he checked in with his friend.

Mantle’s friend quickly gave them permission to hunt, but he asked Mickey a favor. He had a pet mule in the barn who was going blind, and he didn’t have the heart to put him out of his misery. He asked Mickey to shoot the mule for him.

When Mickey came back to the car, he pretended to be angry. He scowled and slammed the door. Billy asked him what was wrong, and Mickey said his friend wouldn’t let them hunt. “I’m so mad at that guy,” Mantle said, “I’m going out to his barn and shoot one of his mules!”

Mantle drove like a maniac to the barn. Martin protested, “We can’t do that!”

But Mickey was adamant. “Just watch me,” he shouted.

When they got to the barn, Mantle jumped out of the car with his rifle, ran inside, and shot the mule. As he was leaving, though, he heard two shots, and he ran back to the car. He saw that Martin had taken out his rifle, too.

“What are you doing, Martin?” he yelled.

Martin yelled back, face red with anger, “We’ll show that son of a gun! I just killed two of his cows!”

Anger can be dangerously contagious. As Proverbs puts it, “Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man … or you may learn his ways” (Prov. 22:24-25).

– Scott Bowerman

Bishopville, South Carolina

TRUST

Gladys Aylward, missionary to China more than fifty years ago, was forced to flee when the Japanese invaded Yangcheng. But she could not leave her work behind. With only one assistant, she led more than a hundred orphans over the mountains toward Free China.

In their book “The Hidden Price of Greatness,” Ray Besson and Ranelda Mack Hunsicker tell what happened:

“During Gladys’s harrowing journey out of war-torn Yangcheng … she grappled with despair as never before. After passing a sleepless night, she faced the morning with no hope of reaching safety. A 13-year-old girl in the group reminded her of their much-loved story of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.

“‘But I am not Moses,’ Gladys cried in desperation.,

” ‘Of course you aren’t,’ the girl said, ‘but Jehovah is still God!'”

When Gladys and the orphans made it through, they proved once again that no matter how inadequate we feel, God is still God, and we can trust in him.

– Jonathan G. Yandell

Garden Grove, California

SIN NATURE

The famous cuckoo bird never builds its own nest. It flies around until it sees another nest with eggs in it and no mother bird around. The cuckoo quickly lands, lays its eggs there, and flies away.

The thrush, whose nest has been invaded, comes back. Not being very good at arithmetic, she gets to work hatching the eggs. What happens? Four little thrushes hatch, but one large cuckoo hatches. The cuckoo is two or three times the size of the thrushes.

When Mrs. Thrush brings to the nest one large, juicy worm, she finds four petite thrush mouths, one cavernous cuckoo mouth. Guess who gets the worm? A full-sized thrush ends up feeding a baby cuckoo that is three times as big as it is.

Over time, the bigger cuckoo gets bigger and bigger, and the smaller thrushes get smaller and smaller. When I was a kid, you could always find a baby cuckoo’s nest. You walked along a hedgerow until you found dead little thrushes, which the cuckoo throws out one at a time.

Paul teaches in Romans 8:5-8 that spiritually speaking, you’ve got two natures in one nest. The nature that you go on feeding will grow, and the nature that you go on starving will diminish.

– Stuart Briscoe

Waukesha, Wisconsin

ACCEPTANCE

In “The Whisper Test,” Mary Ann Bird writes: I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.

When schoolmates asked, “What happened to your lip?” I’d tell them I’d fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.

There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored–Mrs. Leonard by name. She was short, round, happy–a sparkling lady.

Annually we had a hearing test. … Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back–things like “The sky is blue” or “Do you have new shoes?” I waited there for those words that God must have put into her mouth, those seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, “I wish you were my little girl.”

God says to every person deformed by sin, “I wish you were my son” or “I wish you were my daughter.”

MATURITY

In “First Things First,” A. Roger Merrill tells of a business consultant who decided to landscape his grounds. He hired a woman with a doctorate in horticulture who was extremely knowledgeable.

Because the business consultant was very busy and traveled a lot, he kept emphasizing to her the need to create his garden in a way that would require little or no maintenance on his part. He insisted on automatic sprinklers and other labor-saving devices.

Finally she stopped and said, “There’s one thing you need to deal with before we go any further. If there’s no gardener, there’s no garden!”

There are no labor-saving devices for growing a garden of spiritual virtue. Becoming a person of spiritual fruitfulness requires time, attention, and care.

– Bill Norman

Ontario, Canada

What are the most effective illustrations you’ve come across? For items used, Leadership will pay $25. If the material has been published previously, please indicate the source. Send contributions to: To Illustrate … , Leadership, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, IL 60188.

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