Sermon Illustrations

A journalist was assigned to Jerusalem. He moved to the city and got an apartment overlooking the wailing wall. After several weeks he realized that whenever he looked out at the wailing wall there was this old Jewish man standing there praying vigorously. The journalist wondered if he might find a story here. So he goes down to the wall and introduces himself to the man and says, “You come every day to the wall. What are you praying for?”

The Old Jewish man replies, “What am I praying for? Well, in the morning I pray for world peace. Then I pray for the unity of all people. Then I go home and have a cup of tea and come back to the wall in the afternoon to pray for the eradication of illness and disease in the world.”

The Journalist was moved by the old man’s sincerity and persistence. “You mean you have been coming to the wall every day to pray for these things?”

The old man nods.

“How long have you been doing this?” questioned the journalist?

“How long have I been doing this? The old fellow thinks about it for a minute and says, “Maybe twenty, twenty five years.’

The journalist is flabbergasted. “You mean you have been coming to the wall every day for twenty or twenty five years to pray for peace, the unity of people and the eradication of disease?”

The old man nods.

“Well how does it feel to come and pray every day for so many years for these same things?”

The old man replies, “How does it feel? Why it feels like I’m talking to a wall.”

Maybe that’s how it feels to you, too, sometimes when you are living through difficult days. You don’t see God in your situation or in your prayers. It’s like when you are talking to God it’s like “talking to a wall.”

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