8 Sermon Illustrations on Contentment in Trials

My car broke down and it cost $400 to get it fixed...$400 that I did not have. Why me, Lord? After all, I've been as good as most people. In fact, I've been better than most. Why are you treating me this way? Why are you punishing me this way? Then the TV went on the blink, and so did the dishwasher, and the clothes dryer, and the lawn mower, and even the iron! Why me, Lord? Besides that, why, at my age, should I still be having financial problems? Why am I not "set" financially like some others I know? Why have you denied me opportunities for fame and fortune that you have given to others? Why me, Lord? When I find myself starting to think like this, it sometimes helps for me to ask the same questions about other aspects of my life. Lord, what have I done that's so grand that you should have blessed me with a car, a TV set, a clothes dryer, a lawn mower, and an iron? Why did you give me all these things anyway? Why me, Lord? Lord, why did you permit me to be born in America with all its plenty? I could have been born in poverty-stricken Bangladesh instead of in rich America. Why me, Lord? Lord, why did you give me the opportunity to have a job when so many, who are as deserving as I, are without work? Why me, Lord? Lord, why did you give me good health? Others died at my age of heart attacks or are crippled by accidents or disease. Why should I escape ill health when other religious people do not? Why me, Lord? Lord, why have you spared me from the sorrows that strike so many other families? Others, wonderful people, have lost close relatives, but I haven't. Why me, Lord? When I think of all the ways the Lord has blessed me, though I don't deserve it, I wonder how I could possibly complain about the relatively insignificant things that go wrong in my life from time to time. If I could only learn to count my blessings! The Sympathetic Savior Some years ago a man living in Wales had the misfortune of being involved in a mining accident which necessitated the amputation of his right leg. After a period in the hospital, he went to a prosthesis maker to be supplied with an artificial leg. When the appendage had been strapped to the stump, which was all that remained of the injured leg, the attendant requested that the patient get up and walk across the floor. Awkwardly, the man struggled to his feet and staggered across the room. Then, dragging himself painfully back to his chair, he slumped into it, utterly exhausted and discouraged. "That's not how to do it," said the attendant. "Watch this!" Then he walked gracefully across the floor. "Ah," exclaimed the patient, "It's all very easy for you because you don't have any disability." "Oh, haven't I?" replied the attendant. "Look." Pulling up the legs of his trousers, he disclosed that he was not wearing just one artificial limb, but TWO! Too many times we doubt or we get depressed and discouraged and we are inclined to say, "Jesus, it was easy for you. You were God and could not sin. You never tasted the abundance of daily temptation, toil, and frustration. Yet the writer in Hebrews 4:15 tells us "...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-yet was without sin." So the next time you find yourself doubting you can finish the race, look to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith. The next time you're depressed about giving up things for God, look to Jesus who gave up even more. Or the next time you're discouraged, remember the ultimate sacrifice-Jesus bearing the sins of the world on the cross as God turned His back, to say "I LOVE YOU" to us. Which Did God Believe? A large family sat around the table for breakfast one morning. As the custom was, the father returned thanks, blessing God for the food. Immediately afterward, however, as was his bad habit, he began to grumble about hard times, the poor quality of the food he was forced to eat, the way it was cooked, and much more. His little daughter interrupted him saying, "Father, do you suppose God heard what you said a little while ago?" "Certainly," replied the father with the confident air of an instructor. "And did He hear what you said about the bacon and the coffee?" "Of course," the father replied, but not as confidently as before. Then his little girl asked him again, "Then, Father, which did God believe?"

A young colored soldier threw away a piece of hard-tack; when another soldier said, "John, you ought not to do that. Have you forgot Fair Oaks so soon?" Remembering the awful three days, during which they nearly starved, the young soldier gathered up the fragments, and placed them in his haversack.

See BEST, MAKING THE.

DRUDGERY RELIEVED

When Lucy Larcom was fourteen years old she worked in a cotton-mill in Lowell, Mass. After she had been there a few weeks, says _The Youth’s Companion_, she asked and received permission to tend some frames which were near a window, through which she might look out on the Merrimac River and its picturesque banks.

After she had worked there a little while longer, she began to make the window-seat and frame into a library. She pasted the grimy paint all over with clippings of verse which she gathered from such newspapers and magazines as fell into her hands.

So the little factory drudge secured for herself three essentials for human happiness: work, the sight of nature, and the beauty of the poet’s vision. No doubt the work was often wearisome. Perhaps some of the poetry was not very good. But the river and its meadows and hills must have been always refreshing, and the spirit which so intelligently desired the best in the world could not have faltered even on a toilsome path.

What is right living? Just to do your best When worst seems easiest. To bear the ills Of daily life with patient cheerfulness, Nor waste dear time recounting them. To talk Of hopeful things when doubt is in the air. To count your blessings often, giving thanks, And to accept your sorrows silently, Nor question why you suffer. To accept The whole of life as one perfected plan, And welcome each event as part of it. To work, and love your work; to trust, to pray For larger usefulness and clearer sight, This is right living, pleasing in God’s eyes.

— ANONYMOUS