Sermon Illustrations on curiosity

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Background

Do Something Useful

How much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the insides of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses, and the juice of pine trees to realize he could turn them all into the first fiddle. No doubt his wife urged him to get up and do something useful…

Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God’s image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences. It can cost him time and effort, but it pays handsomely. If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 19.

Analogies

Let’s Find Out

I also vividly remember one of my teachers telling the story of three young boys whose route to school went alongside a high wall. Every day as the boys walked to school, they wondered what was on the other side of the wall. Finally one day, their curiosity grew so strong that one of the boys said, “Let’s find out,” and threw his cap over the wall.

“Now I have to climb the wall to see what’s on the other side,” he declared. The other two boys gawked at him in disbelief. But then as they watched him begin to climb, they threw their caps over the wall and joined him. They didn’t want to be left behind. They wanted to experience the discovery themselves, not just hear about it secondhand.

John C Maxwell, No Limits (p. 8). Center Street.