Sermon Illustrations

A tragedy struck a home one evening. It caught on fire in the dead of night. As the father awoke to the smoke alarms he began to scurry to rescue his family. He passed through the fire into his daughter’s room, scooped her up, wrapped her in a blanket and made his way back down the flame-engulfed hall.

The little girl came through without so much as a singed hair but daddy right hand and arm were permanently scarred by the inferno.

From then on he would greet people with his left hand; keeping his right arm out of sight as much as possible. Whenever his daughter was with him, even when she was a teenager, she would proudly reach, take her father’s twisted hand and proudly tell the new friend of her father’s bravery.

At his death, the funeral home, trying to be kind, also kept his right arm out of sight. When the daughter discovered that the hand would not be visible in the casket for the viewing she insisted that other arrangements be made and that the hand be placed across the left for everyone to see. “That hand was wounded for me” she tearfully explained.

Never let the truth of Jesus’ costly and redemptive rescue grow dim.