by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Dec 31, 2019 | Comfort, Love, Sermon Illustrations
Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are and other children’s books, gets many letters from his young fans. A favorite was a “charming” drawing sent on by a little boy’s mother. “I loved it,” Sendak says. “I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Dec 27, 2019 | Habits, Identity, Sermon Illustrations
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it this way. Each of us has what he called a habitus: a set of dispositions to respond more or less spontaneously to the world in particular ways, without much thought. Your habitus is trained into you starting from...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Dec 17, 2019 | Identity, Modern Life, Sermon Illustrations, Storytelling
In his book Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth, Hugh Halter opens with an unlikely scenario: taking his teenage daughter to get her first tattoo. While watching his daughter get “inked,” Halter asked the tattoo artist (named Sean) a very interesting...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Dec 10, 2019 | Sermon Illustrations
If you read through G.K. Chesterton’s writings, it will not be long before you recognize the recurring theme of joy. Joy, Chesterton believed, ought to be a central experience of the one who realizes the absurdity of his life as a gift. What should have been a...
by Stuart Strachan Jr. | Dec 3, 2019 | Sermon Illustrations
Sometimes it is helpful to see what life looks like on the other side of faith, that is, for those who believe that God does not exist. Bertrand Russell, the renowned philosopher and avowed atheist, had this to say about humanity from the perspective of an atheist:...
