6 Sermon Illustrations on Renewal

M. E. Hume-Griffith, in her “Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish Arabia,” tells of a little Persian boy badly disfigured from a “hare-lip,” who was brought by his father to the medical mission at Julfa to be operated upon for the trouble.

The Persians believe that this congenital malformation is the mark left by the Evil One, so this afflicted boy was known in his village by the unenviable title “little devil,” and had been a good deal tormented by his playfellows. The operation was a complete success. After ten days’ careful treatment the dressing was finally removed, and the boy was handed a mirror that he might look for the first time upon his “new” face. Tears of joy rolled down his face as he kissed the hand that had wrought the change, and he murmured brokenly: “I am no longer a little devil, I am no longer a little devil!” And he went back to his comrades to be a hero and an idol.

See INNER LIFE.

RENEWAL NECESSARY

If I have a certain sum of money, I can calculate what necessities it will meet, and how far it will go; but it will go only so far; beyond that is exhaustion. But if I have a bed of strawberries in my garden, after it has borne the crop of the season, and there is no more to be got from it, I can weed and cultivate and fertilize it, and next year it will bear again. And tho the whole bed shows exhaustion, I can set its runners in new rows and nurture them into new life, tho the old plants are only fit to be dug under; and I can renew the life of my bed and after a season it will be as young and fresh and fertile as ever. I have completely renewed its life. So I can renew the life of a note, or lease, or partnership. So bodily strength, tho exhausted every day, is renewed every night; and even if impaired by disease, it may be recovered. There is nothing necessarily hopeless in the exhaustion of anything that has life in it; but all living things need renewal.--FRANKLIN NOBLE, “Sermons in Illustration.”

The verses below by Sam Walter Foss, from a poem on “The Soul Spring Cleaning,” have in them a suggestion that every man may now and then utilize:

Yes, clean yer house, an’ clean yer shed, An’ clean yer barn in ev’ry part; But brush the cobwebs from yer head, An’ sweep the snow-banks from yer heart. Yes, w’en spring cleanin’ comes aroun’ Bring forth the duster an’ the broom, But rake yer fogy notions down, An’ sweep yer dusty soul of gloom.

Plant flowers in the soul’s front yard, Set out new shade an’ blossom trees, An’ let the soul once froze an’ hard Sprout crocuses of new idees. Yes, clean yer house, an’ clean yer shed, An’ clean yer barn in ev’ry part; But brush the cobwebs from yer head, An’ sweep the snow-banks from yer heart!(Text.)