Sermon Illustrations

CNN’s website recently featured an article about Frank Warren, editor of the book The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book. After a troubling period in his own life, he handed out 3000 self-addressed stamped postcards to people on the street, asking them to anonymously mail him their secrets. It began as a sort of public art project in 2004. To his surprise, the cards started pouring in. He doesn’t have to hand out cards anymore. He has received over 100,000 cards, many of which are works of art in themselves. It has led to PostSecret.com, and there are now many sites like it where you can confess your sins or tell your deepest secret anonymously. One postcard had an old picture of a Santa Claus with two boys on his lap. On the picture were written the words, “I wish my sons would contact me.” Another that I was particularly drawn to was one where a man had taken a picture of his hands praying, and written on the picture: “I don’t know how to go back to God, and I want to more than anything else in the world.” Both cards were about finding your way back home. One from a father’s perspective who missed his sons, and the other from a lost son who could not find the way back to his heavenly Father.