SILENCE
Silence is said to be golden, but it can sometimes be pretty yellow.
It often shows a fine command of language to refrain from using it.
SIMPLICITY
We must simplify, simplify, simplify.
—Henry David Thoreau
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Scintillate, scintillate, globule vivific,
Vain would I fathom thy nature specific;
Loftily poised in the other capricious
Strongly resembling a gem carbonaceous.
SIN
One reason sin flourishes is that it’s treated like a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake.
—Billy Sunday
A man said to R. A. Torrey, “I’m an upright man. What do you have against me?” Torrey replied solemnly, “I charge you, Sir, with treason against the King of heaven.”
The essence of sin is the refusal to recognize that we are accountable to God at all.
—Oswald Chambers
The doctrine of original sin is the one philosophy empirically validated by thirty-five hundred years of human history.
—G. K. Chesterton
When sin drives, shame sits in the back seat.
—Swedish proverb
It’s the little things that irritate. It doesn’t hurt to sit on a mountain top, but it does hurt to sit on a tack!
Like ripples on a tranquil pond
That reach the farthest shore,
Our sins affect those close to us,
And many, many more.
The Roman Emperor Valentinian made this memorable deathbed statement, “Amongst all my conquests this is the only one that now comforts me. I have overcome my worst enemy, my own sinful heart.”
—Leslie B. Flynn
The truth is that the world is as it is because individually we are as we are.
—Canon Dick Shepherd
Sow an act, reap a habit,
Sow a habit, reap a character,
Sow a character, reap a destiny.
—Reade
Little sins are what hinder. You don’t stumble over a house, but you do over a pebble.
There is no greater evil than good perverted.
A preacher announced that there are eighty-six kinds of sin. The following week he was besieged with requests for the list.
We are all like the moon. We all have a dark side we want no one else to see.
—Mark Twain
Those who would feign serve Him best are most conscious of sin within.
Men know what is good, but do what is bad.
—Socrates
Right is always right, even if everyone is against it.
And wrong is always wrong, even if everyone is for it.
—William Penn
Man calls sin an accident, God calls it an abomination.
Man calls sin a blunder, God calls it blindness.
Man calls sin a chance, God calls it a choice.
Man calls sin a defect, God calls it a disease.
Man calls sin an error, God calls it enmity.
Man calls sin fascination, God calls it a fatality.
Man calls sin infirmity, God calls it iniquity.
Man calls sin luxury, God calls it lawlessness.
Man calls sin a trifle, God calls it tragedy.
Man calls sin a mistake, God calls it madness.
Man calls sin a weakness, God calls it willfulness.
C. T. Studd, the great missionary pioneer, was sharing a room with a colleague on one of their journeys. The young man awoke before daybreak to discover C. T. huddled in the corner of the room, wrapped in a blanket, poring over his well-thumbed Bible in the light of a sputtering candle.
“What are you doing?” he inquired.
C. T. replied, “I couldn’t sleep because I felt I had something wrong in my relationship with the Lord, and so I have been reading through the New Testament to check on His commands to me in case I have been disobedient.”
Mahatma Gandhi said there are seven sins in the world.
1. Wealth without work.
2. Pleasure without conscience.
3. Commerce without morality.
4. Science without humanity.
5. Worship without sacrifice.
6. Politics without principle.
7. Knowledge without character.
Dear Abby: I have long been a student of the Bible, but I cannot find a list of the seven deadly sins anywhere, and I am too embarrassed to ask my pastor. Please tell me where I can find them.—Midwest Christian.
Dear Christian: The seven deadly sins are not listed as such in any Bible. They can be found in the writing of St. Thomas Aquinas. They are: envy, greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, pride, and anger.
When I was a small boy in Boston, one requirement for admission to the police force was that the man must be six feet tall. Only a six-footer could get in the force—not 5’ 11” or not even 5’ 11 ½”. He might just as well be only 5’ 5” tall as 5’ 11 ½” tall so far as getting on the police force is concerned. If he comes short, it doesn’t make any difference how far short he comes; he is still rejected.
—William H. Houghton
In A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond, a former zookeeper wrote, “Raccoons go through a glandular change at about twenty-four months. After that they often attack their owners. Since a thirty-pound raccoon can be equal to a one hundred-pound dog in a scrap, I felt compelled to mention the change coming to a pet raccoon owned by a young friend of mine, Julie. She listened politely as I explained the coming danger. I’ll never forget her answer.
“ ‘It will be different for me …’ And she smiled as she added, ‘Bandit wouldn’t hurt me, he just wouldn’t.’
“Three months later Julie underwent plastic surgery for facial lacerations when her adult raccoon attacked her for no apparent reason. Bandit was released into the world.”
Sin, too, often comes dressed in an adorable guise, and as we play with it, it is easy to say, “It will be different for me.”
An old deacon who frequently led the prayer meetings would often conclude his petitions with the words, “O Lord, clean all the cobwebs out of my life!” Finally a man who lived next door to him could stand it no longer for he knew that he was a self-seeking, carnal Christian. So one Wednesday night when the old fellow ended in his usual manner, his neighbor jumped to his feet and shouted, “Don’t do it Lord! Don’t do it! Make him kill the spider!”
Someone asked Charles Darwin, “Is there any way in which man differs from animals?” He thought and said, “Man is the only creature that blushes.” When Mark Twain heard that he said, “Yes, and man is the only creature with reason to blush.”
The Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci wandered the streets of Milan, Italy, staring intently at one passerby, then another.
He had been painting The Last Supper on the walls of a convent church and had sketched the outline. Now he was seeking the right men to pose for Christ and the different disciples.
Seeing a strong young man who had a benign expression on his face, he thought he would be good for posing for the apostle John. The man consented to his request for this posing.
A few years passed. He found men to pose for each of the disciples, but he needed someone for Judas. Then one night he saw a man who seemed appropriate as a model for Judas. Then man agreed to pose as “one of the disciples.” After that, the painting was finally completed.
The man who had posed for Judas looked at the painting, his dark face turning pale. He said, “You painted me before. Don’t you remember me?” “No.” “When I first came to Milan I was your model for John. During the years I have lived in sin.”
A friend who lives in a forested area found his home overrun with mice—too many to exterminate with traps. So he bought a few boxes of D-Con and distributed them around the house. That night he couldn’t believe his ears; below him was a feeding frenzy.
In the morning he checked the box and found it licked clean.
Just to make sure the plan worked, he bought and placed another box. Again, the mice went for the flavored poison.
But the tasty and popular nighttime snack did its deadly work. In the days that followed, all was quiet. What the mice thought was good was actually deadly.
—Craig Brian Larson
Sin arises when things that are a minor good are pursued as though they were the most important goals in life. If money or affection or power are sought in disproportionate, obsessive ways, then sin occurs. And that sin is magnified when for these lesser goals we fail to pursue the highest good and the finest goals.
So when we ask ourselves why, in a given situation, we committed a sin, the answer is usually one of two things. Either we wanted to obtain something we didn’t have, or we feared losing something we had.
—Augustine
No sin is small. It is against an infinite God and may have consequences immeasurable. No grain of sand is small in the mechanism of a watch.
—J. Hudson Taylor
The St. Petersburg Times carried a news item about a hungry thief who grabbed some sausages in a meat market, only to find they were part of a string forty-five feet long. Tripping over them, he was hindered in his getaway, and the police found him collapsed in a tangle of fresh sausages. Ironically the very loot this culprit tried to take became the loop that trapped him.
He who sins for profit shall not profit by his sins.
—D. L. Moody
A little boy said, “Sins of commission are the sins we commit, and the sins of omission are those we meant to commit but forgot.”
In 1799 the American ship Nancy was captured by a British cutter in the Caribbean. The officers were arrested and charged with carrying contraband. However, before they reached port they managed to toss the incriminating papers overboard and forge some new ones.
As the exciting trial drew toward the end, it was evident that all of the crew would be released because of the lack of evidence. The papers produced did not list any contraband. But just before the judge raised his gavel to acquit them, another British ship brought in a harpooned shark.
When the shark was slit open, the original papers of the Nancy were found lodged in its insides. The papers were rushed to the trial and arrived just in time for a conviction.
Evangelist Wilbur Chapman told of a preacher friend who delivered a powerful sermon on the subject of sin. After the service, one of the church officers confronted the minister in his study and offered what he thought was some needed counsel. “Pastor,” he said, “we don’t want you to talk as openly as you do about man’s guilt and corruption, because if our boys and girls hear you discussing that subject they will more easily become sinners. Call it a mistake, if you will, but do not speak so plainly about sin.” The pastor removed a small bottle from the shelf behind his desk. Showing it to the man, he said, “You see this label? It says ‘Strychnine,’ and underneath in bold red letters is the word ‘poison.’ What you are asking me to do would be like changing this label. Suppose I write over it ‘Essence of Peppermint.’ Someone who doesn’t know the danger might use it and become very ill. The milder the label, the more dangerous the poison!”
If you find yourself loving any pleasure above prayer, any book better than the Bible, any house more than the house of God, any table better than the Lord’s, or any person more than Christ, take alarm.
—Thomas Guthrie
A boy walked across the United States. At the end of his escapade, newspaper reporters were there to publicize such a spectacular event. One person asked him what gave him the most difficulty. “The rivers?” “No, I always managed to find a bridge or a shallow place to wade across.” “The need of shelter?” “No, I could always find shelter.” “What then gave you the most difficulty?” “The sand in my shoes.” So-called little sins can often be the greatest problems.
Sin is character; sins are conduct.
Sin is the center; sins are the circumference.
Sin is the source of which sins are the secretion.
Sin is the root; sins are the fruit.
Sin is the producer, sins the product.
Sin is the old nature; sins its manifestations.
Sin is the sire; sins his offspring.
Sin is one single act; sins many sinful acts.
Sin is what we are; sins what we have done.
Sin is the fountain; sins its flow.
A corpse, of course, would not feel a four-pound weight placed on its chest. Neither would it feel a four-hundred-pound weight on its chest. So it is with people who do not think they are sinners or need Christ. They can’t feel sin’s weight because they are dead in trespasses and sins.
A cork placed on top of the water will float on the surface. If it is pressed down ten feet or fifty feet or even one hundred feet below the surface and then released, it will rise again. But if it is pressed down two hundred feet below the surface, it can’t rise. The cork will collapse because the pressure is so great.
So it is with people who sink to the depths of sin. The greater the depth, the less probability of their ever rising again.
A scorpion asked a beaver to take him across the river on his back. “Are you insane?” asked the beaver. “While I’m swimming you’ll sting me and then I’ll drown.”
“Oh, come now,” laughed the scorpion. “Why would I string you? Then I’d drown too. Come on. Be logical.”
“That makes sense,” said the beaver. “Hop on and off we’ll go.” The scorpion climbed on the beaver’s back, but halfway across the river he gave the poor trusting beaver a mighty sting. As they both sank to the bottom, the beaver asked, “Why did you do such a wicked thing? You said yourself there would be no logic in your stinging me. Why then did you do it?”
“Logic has nothing to do with it,” sighed the scorpion. “It’s just my nature.”
In and around Ohinemutu, New Zealand, the crust of the earth is so thin that a jet of steam will burst forth if a walking stick is thrust through it. The veneer that is over the old Adamic nature in the heart of a human being is so thin that anything can pierce it, and then symptoms of the volcanic fires of sin in the heart will manifest themselves.
We have all sinned … some in serious, some in trivial things; some from deliberate intention, some by chance impulse, or because we are led away by the wickedness of others; some of us have not stood strongly enough by good resolutions and have lost our innocence against our will though still clinging to it; and, not only have we done wrong, but we shall go on doing wrong to the very end of life.
—Seneca
Some sins we have committed, some we have contemplated, some we have desired, some we have encouraged; in the case of some we are innocent only because we did not succeed.
—Seneca
There are some things we should never ever get used to.
A man consulted a doctor. “I’ve been misbehaving, Doc, and my conscience is troubling me,” he complained.
“And you want something that will strengthen your will power?” asked the doctor.
“Well, no,” the man said. “I was thinking of something that would weaken my conscience.”
A man in Alexander’s army was accused of a crime. He was brought in to see Alexander personally. “Are you guilty?” “Yes.” “What’s your name?” “Alexander.” “What?! Change your conduct or change your name!”
The rule that governs my life is this: Anything that dims my vision of Christ or takes away my taste for Bible study or cramps my prayer life or makes Christian work difficult is wrong for me, and I must, as a Christian, turn away from it.
—J. Wilbur Chapman
A broadcasting company in Finland conducted a contest to find how many synonyms people could think of. First place went to a contestant who came up with 747 synonyms for drunkenness. A man in prison was awarded second place for sending in 678 words for the same thing. He also won a prize for thinking of 170 synonyms for stealing. Another man knew 203 words for lying.
—Our Daily Bread
A prisoner was breaking stones on the road in back of a prison when a preacher approached and asked him how he was getting along. The prisoner responded, “Well, Parson, I sure have come to the conclusion that breaking stones is like breaking God’s law: you can break God’s law but you can’t get rid of it. I am breaking these stones day after day, but they are stones just the same and they are still here—I can’t get rid of them.”
Sin is like a river which begins in a quiet spring and ends in a stormy sea.
There is a great difference between sin dwelling and reigning in us. It dwells in every believer, but reigns in the unbeliever.
—D. L. Moody
The loose character generally winds up in a tight place.
The trouble with little sins is that they don’t stay little.
Sir James, the discoverer of chloroform, was asked, “What’s the greatest discovery you ever made?” He answered, “That I am a sinner.”
Pennsylvania Dutch sayings:
“As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.”
“If you go barefoot, don’t plant thorns.”
“After your fling, watch for the sting.”
“As we make it, so we have it.”
Sins are like car headlights. The other fellow’s are always more glaring than our own.
Good ends do not make bad actions lawful, yet bad ends make good actions lawful.
—D. L. Moody
In a museum in Athens, Greece, is a strange sight in one of the rear rooms—two bodies fastened close together by a heavy chain. The bodies and the chains have petrified and become like stone.
Long ago, the courts sentenced a criminal to die by being chained to a dead man’s body. Those petrified bodies in the Athens Museum had been chained together; a living man had been chained to a dead body. When he died, the two bodies were buried together.
Joseph Cook, a famous preacher in Boston, was invited to represent Christianity at the Parliament of World Religions. When he was asked to speak, he got up and said, “Is there any one who can cleanse the bloody hands of Lady Macbeth?” Of course no other religion could offer an answer. Then he told of the only One who can cleanse from sin.
It is precisely when you consider the best in a man that you see there is in each of us a core of pride or self-centeredness which corrupts out best achievements and blights our best experiences. It comes out in jealousy which spoils our friendships, in the vanity we feel when we have done something pretty good, in the easy conversion of love into lust, in the meanness which makes us depreciate the efforts of other people, in the distortion of our own self-interest, in our fondness for flattery and our resentment of blame, in our self-assertive profession of fine ideals which we never begin to practice.
—Malcolm Muggeridge
An evangelist tells this story. “I asked a girl of fourteen at the close of a Sunday afternoon service, ‘Do you know how many sins you have?’ ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I have never thought about it.’ ‘Well, suppose we try to find out. Do you think you have committed three sins a day—one of thought, one of word, and one of deed?’ ‘Oh, I expect lots more than that,’ she said immediately. ‘Well then, how many would that be for a year?’ ‘Probably more than a thousand a year,’ she replied. ‘As you are now fourteen, how many sins would that make in all?’ ‘Fourteen thousand!’ she said under her breath. ‘Jenny,’ I said, ‘that’s all I want to say to you today. Fourteen thousand sins, think of that!’ ”
When you pick up an apple with a worm hole in it, you are inclined to think that a worm crawled to the surface of the apple, liked it, and bored the hole from the outside. But this is not generally the case. Rather, a worm lays an egg in an apple blossom and the egg is hatched in the core of the apple. The hole that you see indicates that the worm has bored its way out from within.
Sin breaks fellowship with God. A little girl committed a certain offense, and when her mother discovered it she began to question her daughter. Immediately the child lost her smile and a cloud darkened her face as she said, “Mother, I don’t feel like talking.”
So it is with us when our fellowship with God is broken by sin in our lives. We do not feel like talking to Him. If you do not feel like praying, it is probably a good indication that you should start praying immediately.
—Billy Graham
A boy was dressing to go out for the evening. He queried his mother, who was in the adjoining room, “Mother, is this shirt dirty?”
Without so much as looking she replied, “Yes, it’s dirty; put on a clean one.” When he had dressed, he entered his mother’s room and asked her how she knew the shirt was not clean when she had not looked at it.
“If it had been clean,” she replied, “you would have known and not asked me. Remember, if it’s doubtful, it’s dirty.”
In the sixteenth century Juan Nepomucen, a cabin boy of Panfile Narvaez’ Fleet who was afflicted with smallpox, escaped ashore on the coast of Mexico and caused the deaths of three million Indians by infecting them with smallpox. Dreadful as it was, it doesn’t compare with the infection of sin transmitted by Adam to the whole human race.
An army marched through a certain country, and the commander-in-chief ordered that there should be no plundering; no one must touch a bunch of grapes in going through the vineyards, or he would die for his disobedience. One soldier, tempted by a bunch of grapes, plucked it and began to eat it. He was brought before the captain who declared that the law must be carried out and the thief must die. He was taken out to die; and though he knew his head would be cut off, he went on eating the grapes as he walked along. A comrade wondered about this; but the condemned man answered that no one ought to grudge him his grapes for they cost him dear enough.
Two brothers lived terrible lives and were dissolute. They had a terrible reputation in the town. Then one of them died. The living brother said to the pastor, “I’d like for you to have the funeral and to refer to him as a saint.” The pastor said, “I can’t do that.” “I wish you would. If you will, I will give the church fifty thousand dollars.” “Well, maybe I should think about it. I’ll call you back.” He called back and said, “I’ll do it.” At the funeral he said, “He was a scoundrel, a wild dissolute person. We all know the reputation of the brothers. And compared to his brother, he was a saint.”