Sermon Illustrations

Thin Slices! (07.15.05--Tomorrow--Deuteronomy 29:29)

Did you ever notice how at least having just a taste of something, a little hint or just a brief encounter with what we were anticipating, can be so much fun?

I know a lot about anticipation. Being a bird watcher for many years, I am familiar with being titillated by the distant sound of a bird species I have long wished to discover but never quite had the good fortune to see. I can’t count the number of times that the deep woods or the expansive meadow have hidden the prize from me. Hearing but not seeing is what keeps bird watcher’s coming back for more.

In many ways, what the Lord has in store for us down the road is very much like those hard to see but sometimes heard treasures in the bush. In His love for his children, God often consents to a little taste, a brief experience, in order to prepare us for the “feast” that awaits us someday.

Chuck Swindoll writes: “You remember coming home in the afternoon after school feeling very hungry and your mother had supper on the stove? And you remember at times she would have a cake in the oven? I don’t know why mothers put children through such torture. When you were so hungry, the aroma of the cake filled the house, and you wanted a piece of that cake. ‘Not until after supper.’ Every mother I’ve ever met says that. Being the model child I was, I would wait patiently, except on a few occasions when I would badger her for a slice of that cake. And then she would taken an exceedingly sharp knife with an exceedingly thin blade and slice off the smallest slice of cake one can imagine and give me a little taste of first fruit of the cake. It was only a sample to what was to come later.” (Swindoll’s Ultimate Book of Illustrations & Quotes)

Like Chuck’s mom, there are some things in this life that God simply does not choose to reveal to us at the time and the place we would most like it to be. Perhaps he knows that if we took a big helping of it now, it would spoil the tomorrow He had in mind for us all along. It may be that He knows we are not capable as of yet to “consume” so much all at one time. It may also be that what we don’t know now will be better known at another time when we are more mature and able to cope with it. Wanting to know, to share in what God knows now is a natural occupation of the curiosity that God has installed in each of us. He reveals when and how He is ready to and all revelations are planned for our good. Be thankful for the “thin slice” of tomorrow He sometimes blesses us with and be encouraged that the best is yet to come!

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt 6:34)

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This Passing Day!

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