The Sermon Story

"Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" ( Psalm 90:12 ). Most of us spend a great deal of energy trying not to think about death. Yet the Bible keeps bringing it up, not to frighten us, but because facing our own mortality is one of the fastest ways to find out what we really value. This story about death comes from an unlikely preacher: the co-founder of Apple, speaking to a crowd of graduating students the year after he was told he had only months to live. We retell it in our own words, with a short quotation from the speech itself, and close with a takeaway for preaching or personal reflection. If you want to go further, the reflections on Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Atul Gawande's Being Mortal on Sopranu make good companion reading. Story in this post: Steve Jobs on Death: "The Most Important Tool" ──────── ✝ ──────── Steve Jobs on Death: "The Most Important Tool" The original illustration places the spee...

"What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" ( Matthew 16:26 ). And the psalmist reminds us that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" ( Psalm 139:14 ). These ten stories about the meaning of life, purpose and self-image, retold in our own words, include famous people who reached the top and found it empty, an artist's three great questions, a climber who found joy in the struggle and several stars who struggled with how they saw themselves. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons or reflection. Stories in this collection: "Was This It?": Phil Jackson's Empty Victory "Sheer Joy": Why George Mallory Climbed Everest I'd Pick More Daisies: If I Had My Life to Live Over "Is That It?": George Harrison's Question Gauguin's Three Questions "Because I'm Human": Paul McCartney's Insecurity At Seventeen: Janis Ian and the Pain of Not Being Beautiful Finding Purpose: ...