Sermon Illustrations on The Passing Of Time

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Stones for Time

Author

Keywords

I once gifted my husband a container of small stones on his birthday. I’m thoughtful like that. Each stone represented a month we had remaining until our children left home. While some may consider th...

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All the Succession of Time

Author

Jeremy Taylor

Keywords

All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every one, preaches our funer...

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What Time Is It?

Author

Jeffrey Bilbro

Keywords

This may seem like a simple question, but there are many ways to answer it: my phone tells me it’s 6:18 a.m.; the calendar tells me it’s May 25; my prayer book tells me it’s the thirty-fifth day of Ea...

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Keeping Time with the Spirit

Author

James K. A. Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 5:25, Romans 8:14, Isaiah 30:21

Keeping time with the Spirit is less a regimental march—left, right, left, right! ad infinitum—and more like a subtle dance, a responsive feel for what comes next. Lionel Salter offers a parallel in h...

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Sabbath-living Slows Down and Expands Time

Author

Tiffany Shlain

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 6:31, Isaiah 30:15

Living 24/6 feels like magic and here’s why: it seems to defy the laws of physics, as it both slows down time and gives us more of it. I laugh a lot more on that day without screens. I notice everythi...

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Measuring Time

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Galileo Gallilei was a remarkable individual with a variety of talents, which he utilized effectively throughout his life. One day, while observing a swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa, he made a ...

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The Creation of Artificial Time

Author

John Mark Comer

Keywords

The Passing of Time

We all know our world has sped up to a frenetic pace. We feel it in our bones, not to mention on the freeway. But it hasn’t always been this way. Let me nerd out on you for a few minutes just to show...

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Parkinson’s Law

Author

C. Northcote Parkinson

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 5:16, Colossians 3:23, Ecclesiastes 6:7, Psalm 90:12, James 4:14

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

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The Waiting Room

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

So here I sit in the waiting room. The receptionist took my name, recorded my insurance data, and gestured a chair. “Please have a seat. We will call you when the doctor is ready.” I look around. A mo...

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A Contrast to the Realm of Eternity

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 57:15, Psalm 90:4, Revelation 1:4, Exodus 20:8-11, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Genesis 2:2-3

The framework of seven days is rich with divine intention. Certainly, in biblical numerology, the number seven symbolizes divine perfection. But perhaps it goes deeper than that. Echoing church father...

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BE SHORT

Author

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Keywords

Scripture

James 1:19, Ecclesiastes 5:2, Proverbs 10:19, Proverbs 17:27, Ecclesiastes 3:7, Proverbs 15:23

The Puritan preacher Cotton Mather, hard at work over the business of ministry, prayer, and writing, wrote over his study door in large letters, “BE SHORT.” Today, he might well have written "MAK...

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Even the Almighty took seven

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 15:23, Proverbs 16:1, Ecclesiastes 3:1, James 1:19, Proverbs 25:11, Genesis 1:

Franklin D. Roosevelt had hoped the Yalta conference (which discussed the future of Europe and Germany post-WWII) wouldn’t last more than five or six days. Winston Churchill, however, remarked, “I do ...

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Keep Your Lamps Trimmed

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Scripture

Matthew 25:1-13, Luke 12:35, Hebrews 12:1-2, Exodus 3:7-8, Galatians 6:9, Revelation 21:4, Genesis 28:12

Have you ever sung "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning"? African American spirituals are among the great treasures of American worship. They are born out of the tragic (and, let's b...

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The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Author

Kenneth E. Bailey

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 23:null

In his excellent study of the famous Biblical passage on shepherds, ( The Good Shepherd: A Thousand Year Journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament ) , scholar Ken Bailey provides context to the 23...

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The Passing of the Peace

Author

Tish Harrison Warren

Keywords

In the Anglican liturgy the passing of the peace comes after confession and absolution, on the heels of our reminder that we are forgiven. This too is no coincidence. Our forgiveness and reconciliatio...

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Deconstruction is trending

Author

Ian Harber

Keywords

Scripture

2 Timothy 4:3-4, Colossians 2:8, Acts 20:30, Matthew 24:11, Ephesians 4:14, Numbers 16:

Deconstruction isn’t a trendy thing to do, but it is a trend that is happening at scale in our country and passing from person to person. Anecdotally, when I look up various hashtags on TikTok, th...

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The Grateful, Injured, Dog

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

2 Samuel 9:1–13, Exodus 2:1–10 , Proverbs 19:17, Luke 10:25–37 , Matthew 18:21–35, Psalm 103:2–4

There’s a story (probably apocryphal) about a small dog that had been hit by a car and left injured by the side of the road. A passing nurse noticed the wounded animal, saw it was still alive, and sto...

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What Do You Believe Doc?

Author

D. Michael Lindsay

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 1:8-9, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Mark 9:24, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 10:17, Hebrews 11:6

In a quiet hospital room in North Carolina, an eager young doctor with a bright future evaluates his elderly patient with not much future left at all. She has a terminal heart condition, inoperable. A...

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The Patient Father

Author

Source Unknown

Keywords

There is a story about a man who stopped in the grocery store on the way home from work to pick up a couple of items for his wife. He wandered around aimlessly for a while searching out the needed gro...

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Stories of Hospitality from Ancient Cultures

Author

Dorothy C. Bass

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 4:9, Matthew 25:34-46, Leviticus 19:34, Acts 28:2, Isaiah 58:7

A Catholic priest recently told a gathering of friends about a time when he arrived in Israel late on a Friday afternoon, just as everything was about to shut down for the Sabbath. Public transportati...

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Grading on a Curve

Author

Mother Teresa

Keywords

Heaven

After thirty years of being pastor, I am still amazed by the number of people who believe God is going to grade on a curve. They know they have done wrong, have mistreated others, particularly those c...

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Americans Approach to Giving

Author

Chris Willard and Jim Sheppard

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 20:35, Luke 6:38, Proverbs 3:9-10, Malachi 3:10, 2 Corinthians 9:6-7

In their book Passing the Plate (Oxford, 2008), Christian Smith and Michael Emerson introduce the phrase “discretionary obligation” as a way to understand the typical American Christian’s approach to ...

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What is Man?

Author

Nika Maples

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 8:4

One discovery was a time-released revelation to me. On my way to classes each week, I had been passing Emerson Hall, the building that houses the philosophy department at Harvard. The enormous inscrip...

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Passing the Buck

Author

John Maxwell

Keywords

Two shipwrecked men in tattered clothes slouch together at one end of a lifeboat. They watch casually as three people at the other end of the boat bail furiously, trying to keep the vessel afloat. One...

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The Deadline

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

Death

He didn’t look omniscient. He looked intelligent, with his horn-rimmed glasses, gray-flannelled suit, and stack of documents. He was smart, prepared, and every bit the statistician his profession dema...

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The Pressures of Modern Life (Written Almost a Century Ago)

Author

Thomas Kelly

Keywords

The problem we face today needs very little time for its statement. Our lives in a modern city grow too complex and overcrowded. Even the necessary obligations which we feel we must meet grow overnigh...

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Finding God in the Slowness of Life

Author

A. J. Swoboda & Nijay K. Gupta

Keywords

We admit that embracing slowness is hard . But slowness transforms us. One of our favorite theologians, Dr. John Goldingay, served for decades as a professor of Old Testament theology. Goldingay ...

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Looking Back to Find the Way Out

Author

Casey K. Tygrett

Keywords

Scripture

John 14:26, Revelation 2:5, Philippians 1:3, Isaiah 46:9, 2 Peter 1:12-15

Barbara Brown Taylor recounts her first experience with caving, the exploration of caves that are not prepared or made easily accessible for inexperienced explorers. Her guides gave her a bit of helpf...

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Just a stain in the soil

Author

William Rowley

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 3:20, Genesis 18:27, James 4:14, Psalm 90:12, Psalm 39:4, 1 Peter 2:24-25, Psalm 90:10, Psalm 78:39, 1 Chronicles 29:15, Psalm 39:5, Psalm 144:4, Job 14:1, Psalm 103:15-16, Job 7:6-7, Genesis 2:7

I love a British TV show called Time Team. Hosted by Tony Robinson, a team of archeologists descend on a site in Britain and excavate for three days. Inevitably, the archeologists unearth the dead...

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End of Construction, Thank you for your Patience

Author

Billy Graham

Keywords

My wife, Ruth…was one of those who could lighten heavy hearts, especially mine. I will never forget when she announced what she wanted engraved on her gravestone, and for those who have so respectfull...

Sermon Illustrations on the passing of time

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