Sermon Illustrations on trap

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation...

In the vast, frozen wilderness of the Arctic, an Inuit hunter used a clever technique to trap a wolf. He took a sharp knife and carefully coated its blade with layers of animal blood, letting each lay...

When legendary magician Harry Houdini came into a town to do his show, he often went to the local jail, gathering a crowd of people along the way. To get buzz going about his upcoming performance, he ...

Sister Joan Chittister writes about regret in the context of aging, though I think most of us can identify with this personification of Mr. R.: Regret…comes upon us one day dressed up like wisdom, l...

Consider the following summary of an interview conducted by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two of the world’s leading researchers on poverty: In a village in Indonesia we met Ibu Emptat, the wif...

In her excellent little book ( Mythical Me ), Richella Parham describes how her meditation on the Trinity helped her escape the comparison and competition trap: The relationship among the Father, So...

In a class that I was in once, I saw a man with his well-worn, heavily marked Bible open before him, playing a game of “trap the teacher.” He should have known better than to try to trap this particul...

Christianity Does Not Reject the Body The “spirit-good / body-bad” dualism that often passes for Christianity is actually an ancient gnostic error called “Manichaeism,” and it couldn’t be further from...

Take the cul-de-sac, for example, which is my metaphor for the world of suburban monotony and triviality that so many Western Christians find themselves trapped in. The literal cul-de-sac (i.e., a dea...

A professional carpet-layer stepped back to admire his customary flawless work. While surveying the installed carpet, he reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette and realized the pack was missing....

For all our hunger for the next bit of breaking news, we quickly forget it once we’ve extracted the emotional charge it can give us. We are soon hungry for the next outrage, the next unbelievable head...

All addictions begin in shame. They don’t begin with troubling behavior—a binge on porn, a night of overdrinking–but with a sense of lack or limitation. An addict may be loved deeply, but sense of lac...

The Land of What-Ifs is a tempting place to dwell. It is also a dangerous place to be. And chances are, if you flipped to this page, you’re stepping foot into its territory. Before you even pull the c...

On a beautiful April afternoon in 2008, two college softball teams faced off in a decisive playoff game beneath the Cascade Mountains. The Western Oregon Wolves battled Central Washington University, ...

Hope remains possible even amid our failures—whether we disappoint God, let down our families, or fall short of our own expectations—because divine compassion operates like an inexhaustible well. Each...

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

Have you ever seen As Good As It Gets, the late-nineties film starring Jack Nicholson? In it, Nicholson plays a cranky, misanthropic writer in New York City, snapping at anyone who crosses his p...

In his book The Grand Essentials , Ben Patterson recounts the story of an S-4 submarine that sank off the coast of Massachusetts, leaving its entire crew trapped inside. Despite numerous rescue a...

The following prayer from the Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, is vivid in its honesty and captures the challenge of seeking God’s will through a life of prayer: My Lord God, I have no idea where I a...

One of the most challenging and complex economic realities faced by many of our neighbors who live paycheck to paycheck is finding financial resources to cover immediate and unexpected expenses. To ad...

On October 13, 2010, Luis Urzua emerged into the open air after 69 days trapped over 2,000 ft underground (300 ft deeper than the height of the tallest building in the US). Luis, the shift supervisor,...

The following advice on success, written by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, is extremely different from what we are used to (at least in the West,) where success is often seen as an absolute good. ...

A contemplative politics entails a two-part movement, one that parallels Thoreau’s injunction to be wary of trivia and devoted to eternal truths. The first involves an askesis, a kind of self-discipli...

In my book Red Moon Rising, I described a time on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza when an Anglican priest asked a bunch of young missionaries sent out by our organization to pray for rain because th...

To partake of the new creation is to see Christ for the first time. And his glory changes us. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image fr...

Palm Sunday is the occasion on the Christian calendar when we commemorate Jesus’ triumphal entry in Jerusalem. The concept of a triumph requires some explanation, because it’s foreign to modern believ...

Would you like a no-stress life? A wise person would not accept that option, no matter how tempting it might sound. A stress-free life would be fatal. If we do not have change, challenge, and novelty ...

In his important book When Narcissism Comes to Church, professor and therapist Chuck DeGroat makes an important connection between shame, narcissism and addiction by looking at the myth of Narcissus. ...

This story of Thomas Merton’s dramatic vocational change is illustrative of the life that Jesus offers us. For many of us, we assume discipleship means becoming less “us” and more like “Jesus”. But if...

During the 1960s the Lord raised up an indigenous leader in the church in Mozambique named Martinho Campos. The story of his ministry, Life Out of Death in Mozambique, is a remarkable testimony to God...