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<div><span style="font-size: small">Sermons for Proper 25</span><span style="font-size: small"> </span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Mark 10:46-52<span style="color: black"> - <strong>"</strong></span><b><span style="color: black">Lord, I Want to See</span></b><strong><span style="color: black">"</span></strong></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Hebrews 7:23-28 <span style="color: black">- <strong>"</strong></span><b>From Self-Help to God-Trust</b><b><span style="color: black">”</span></b><span style="color: black"> by Leonard Sweet</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: black">Mark 10<font size="4">,</font> the sermon title <b>“</b></span><b>Lord, I Want to See</b>” </span>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: black">Keller,
so brave and inspiring to us in her deafness and blindness, once wrote a
magazine article entitled: "Three days to see." In that article she
outlined what things she would like to see if she were granted just
three days of sight. It was a powerful, thought provoking article. On
the first day she said she wanted to see friends. Day two she would
spend seeing nature. The third day she would spend in her home city of
New York watching the busy city and the workday of the present. She
concluded it with these words: "I who am blind can give one hint to
those who see: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you were stricken blind.'</span></span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: black">As
bad as blindness is in the 21st century, however, it was so much worse
in Jesus' day. Today a blind person at least has the hope of living a
useful life with proper training. Some of the most skilled and creative
people in our society are blind. But in first century Palestine
blindness meant that you would be subjected to abject poverty. You would
be reduced to begging for a living. You lived at the mercy and the
generosity of others. Unless your particular kind of blindness was
self-correcting, there was no hope whatsoever for a cure. The skills
that were necessary were still centuries beyond the medical knowledge of
the day.</span></span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: black">Little wonder then that one of the signs of the coming of the Messiah was that the blind should receive their sight…</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: black">Hebrews 7<font size="4">,</font> the sermon titled <b>“</b></span><b>From Self-Help to God-Trust</b><b><span style="color: black">”</span></b><span style="color: black"> by Leonard Sweet </span></span>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">It
is always the longest, most solidly stocked stacks in any bookstore —
the “self help” nonfiction section. Maybe it’s a holdover from the old
American adage of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.” We’ll
use some “self-help” suggestions offered by others only as long as we
get to pick and choose what kind of help we’ll consider acceptable, only
as long as we are still ultimately in charge of the direction and
duration that the “help” we seek takes. </span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small"> “Self
help” books, whether they are focused on helping us learn to navigate
the tax code, or the web, or an emotional “web” brought on by an illness
or unemployment, a death or depression, still let us selectively
embrace the advice they offer. We can avoid some topics, or even skip
whole chapters, if we find them too challenging or uncomfortable. “Self
help” manuals let us selectively focus on only those parts of our self
that we want to prune and preen.</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">If
truth be told, every civilization has had some form of “self-help,”
even if they didn’t have the same concept of “self” that we do. What
moral improvement literature was to the 19<sup>th</sup> century, self-help books are today…</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: black">The rest of this sermon can be obtained by joining </span></span><span style="color: black"><a target="_blank" __removedlink__165995549__href="http://mail.churchmail.com/lists/lt.php?id=Kk8CCggDDQBQCkkNAA9KDAtXUVw%3D"><span style="font-size: small"><font color="#0000ff">http://www.sermons.com/signup</font></span></a></span><span style="font-size: small"><span style="color: black"> </span></span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">I Heard My Brother Crying</span></div>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Some
years ago in a small village in the Midwest, a little twelve-year old
girl named Terri was babysitting her little brother. Terri walked
outside to check the mail. As she turned back from the mailbox, she
couldn't believe her eyes. The house was on fire. So very quickly the
little house was enveloped in flames. <br>
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Terri ran as fast as she could into the flaming house only to find her
baby brother trapped by a burning rafter which had fallen and pinned him
to the floor. Hurriedly, Terri worked to free her brother. She had
trouble getting him loose as the flames were dancing around their heads.
Finally, she freed him. She picked him up and quickly took him outside
and revived him just as the roof of the house caved in. <br>
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By this time, firemen were on the scene and the neighbors had gathered
outside the smoldering remains of the house. The neighbors had been too
frightened to go inside or to do anything to help, and they were
tremendously impressed with the courage of the twelve-year old girl.
They congratulated her for her heroic efforts and said, "Terri, you are
so very brave. Weren't you scared? What were you thinking about when you
ran into the burning house?" I love Terri's answer. She said, "I wasn't
thinking about anything. I just heard my little brother crying." <br>
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Let me ask you something? How long has it been? How long has it been
since you heard your brother or sister crying? How long has it been
since you stopped and did something about it? <br>
<br>
James W. Moore, Collected Sermons, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc. <br>
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<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-size: small">Humor: The Most Difficult Case</span></div>
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Two psychiatrists were talking and one asked the other, "What was your most difficult case?"<br>
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His colleague answered, "Once I had a patient who lived in a pure
fantasy world. He believed that a wildly rich uncle in South America was
going to leave him a fortune. All day long he waited for a make-believe
letter to arrive from a fictitious attorney. He never went out or did
anything. He just sat around and waited."<br>
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"What was the result?" asked the first psychiatrist.<br>
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"Well, it was an eight-year struggle but I finally cured him. And then that stupid letter arrived..."<br>
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Some people are afraid to open their eyes. And some just keep their eyes closed no matter what. <br>
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Billy D. Strayhorn, From the Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, Inc.<br>
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