During the fourteenth century the greatest pestilence swept through Europe that has ever been recorded in history. It was called *’The Black Death,” and claimed its victims by hundreds of thousands, in every country of the old world. In that dreadful epoch men sought...
One of my most cherished mentors, Luther Ridgeway, preached the same sermon every Christmas Eve. I first heard it in the late 70s. But he first preached it on 25 December 1961, at Williamsville United Methodist Church in western New York. The sermon is entitled “No...
A man was bothered with continual ringing in his ears (tinnitus), bulging eyes, and a flushed face. Over a period of three years he went to doctor after doctor. One took out his tonsils, one removed his appendix, another pulled out all his teeth. Nothing seemed to...
Everyone is celebrating the Sinatra centennial. Here is a story you might be able to weave into one of your sermons. Sinatra was famous for a mercurial temperament. “Yet it would have been unwise for anyone to anticipate his reaction, for he is a wholly unpredictable...
Canadian author Margaret Terry made this her New Year’s Facebook Greeting for 2014. It would make a great Christmas eve meditation, or something to use when you only have a few minutes to convey the good news: “The first year I made Chocolate Hearts, Patrick was six...
A young couple stepped into a crowded elevator. The girl, with a look on her face a “smile wide,” held out her left hand to the other riders and exclaimed; “See my diamond ring! We just got engaged!” Her fiancé quietly demurred: “Oh, it’s not much of a ring. I…...
