Sermon Illustrations

LUTHER ON SWEEPING STREETS LIKE MICHELANGELO

Martin Luther was approached by a working man who wanted to know how he could serve God. Luther asked him, "What is your work now?" The man said, "I’m a shoemaker."

Much to the cobbler’s surprise, Luther replied, "Then make good shoes and sell them at a fair price."

Luther didn’t tell the man to make "Christian shoes." He didn’t tell the man to leave his shoe business and become a monk.

Six months before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King spoke to a group of Jr. High School students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia and this is what he said: "If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: 'Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.'"

(From a sermon by Monty Newton, Bowed Knees, Confessing Tongues and God Glorifying Lives, 12/24/2010)

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