These are quotes which stood out to me, possibly for use in a sermon someday. Their presence here does not mean I agree with them, it merely shows that I might want to reference them later. The default view is five random selections. Use the tag list on the right to view all quotes relevant to that theme.
At the Olympic Games in Paris in 1924 the sport of canoe racing was added to the list of international competitions. The favorite team in the four-man canoe race was the United States team. One member of that team was a young man by the name of Bill Havens. As the time for the Olympics neared, it became clear that Bill's wife would give birth to her first child about the time that Bill would be competing in the Paris Games. In 1924 there were no jet airliners from Paris to the United States, only slow-moving ocean-going ships. And so Bill found himself in a dilemma. Should he go to Paris and risk not being at his wife's side when their first child was born? Or should he withdraw from the team and remain behind. Bill's wife insisted that he go to Paris. After all, he had been working towards this for all these years. It was the culmination of a life-long dream. Clearly the decision was not easy for Bill to make. Finally, after much soul searching, Bill decided to withdraw from the competition and remain behind with his wife so that he could be with her when their first child arrived. Bill considered being at her side a higher priority than going to Paris to fulfill a life-long dream. To make a long story short, the United States four-man canoe team won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics. And Bill's wife was late in giving birth to her first child. She was so late that Bill could have competed in the event and returned home in time to be with her when she gave birth. People said, "What a shame." But Bill said he had no regrets. After all, his commitment to his wife was more important then, and it still was now. The story of Bill Havens is a story of how one man paid a high price to fulfill a commitment to someone he loved. _________________ If the above illustration is used offer this sequel near the end of your sermon: There is a sequel to the story of Bill Havens. The child eventually born to Bill and his wife was a boy, whom they named Frank. Twenty-eight years later, in 1952, Bill received a cablegram from Frank. It was sent from Helsinki, Finland, where the 1952 Olympics were being held. The cablegram read, and I quote it exactly: "Dad, I won. I'm bringing home the gold medal you lost while waiting for me to be born." Frank Havens had just won the gold medal for the United States in the canoe-racing event, a medal his father had dreamed of winning but never did. There is a sequel to our acts of commitment as well, our commitments to one another, and our commitment to God. We reap the abundant harvest of righteousness. We reap a harvest of joy and peace that endures forever
Once upon a time there was a shepherd tending his sheep at the edge of a country road. A brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee screeches to a halt next to him. The driver, a young man dressed in a Briani suit, Cerutti shoes, Ray-Ban sunglasses, Jovial Swiss wrist watch, and a Bhs tie gets out and asks the shepherd, "If I can guess how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?" The shepherd looks at the young man, then looks at the sprawling field of sheep and says, "Okay." The young man parks the SUV, connects his notebook and wireless modem, enters a NASA site, scans the ground using his GPS, opens a database and 60 Excel tables filled with algorithms, then prints a 150 page report on his high tech mini printer. He then turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep here." The shepherd answers, "That's correct! You can have your sheep." The young man takes one of the animals and puts it in the back of his vehicle. The shepherd looks at him and asks, "Now, if I guess your profession, will you pay me back in kind?" The young man answers, "Sure." The shepherd says, "You are a consultant." "Exactly! How did you know?" asks the young man. "Very simple," answers the shepherd. "First, you came here without being called. Second, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew. Third, you don't understand anything about my business - and I'd really like to have my dog back."
"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way...you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions."
"If I could do miracles, I'd do miracles. But since I can't, we have visual aids."
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66364,00.html You Can't Ignore My Wrath By Kristen Philipkoski 11:07 AM Jan. 24, 2005 PT You can try, but you can't ignore that angry voice yelling at you, or anyone else. Whether it's your dad, your girlfriend, your sister or a stranger, you must pay attention. Human brains are just wired that way, according to a study published in the Jan. 23 issue of Nature Neuroscience. Wrathful voices trigger a strong response in the brain, even when we are trying not to pay attention or the comments are meaningless, say researchers at the University of Geneva. Researchers at the University of Geneva found that the human brain is unable to ignore surly voices, no matter how much the brain's owner might want to.The circle shows the part of the brain activated by angry voices. Researchers at the University of Geneva found that even when study subjects tried to ignore angry voices, the brain's superior temporal sulcus showed enhanced activity. The brain appears to place a high priority on processing urgent sounds, like angry voices, that might indicate a threat is present. So, try as we might, when someone is angry the brain cannot avoid noticing, regardless of what the fuss is all about. "The new finding (is) that the influence of attention cannot diminish the brain activity associated with certain types of salient input: in this case, angry voices," said G. Ron Mangun, a cognitive neuroscience professor at the University of California at Davis, who did not participate in the research. This tells us that the brain will give priority to potentially important sensory signals, allowing them to penetrate our otherwise engaged minds, Mangun said. Didier Grandjean and his colleagues collected brain scans from people while they listened to both angry and neutral voices making comments that were irrelevant to the listeners, then compared the results to responses to neutral speech. Using functional MRI technology, the researchers could see what part of the brain was activated by the surly sounds. The angry voices increased activity in the superior temporal sulcus, a brain region associated with voice recognition. Even when the subjects were told to ignore an angry voice played to one ear and asked instead to listen to a neutral voice played to the other ear, the MRIs showed increased brain activity in the superior temporal sulcus. Previous studies showed a similar fundamental brain response when subjects saw angry or fearful faces. "The paper by Grandjean and colleagues cleverly pits attention against emotional relevance, and uses fMRI brain imaging to investigate whether or not attention can override the registration of highly emotionally relevant verbal input," Mangun said. "They find that ... this influence of attention cannot diminish the brain activity associated with certain types of salient input: in this case, angry voices." The research could have implications in learning more about normal, as well as diseased, brains, Grandjean said. "A better understanding of how the brain implements emotion and attention is crucial both for our understanding of the interactions between emotion and attention in normal individuals," Grandjean said, "and for the identification of potential cerebral dysfunctions in pathologies with affective disorders such as social anxiety, autism, schizophrenia or depression."