SIQs (stories, illustrations, quotes)
Ash Wednesday Year B

#1
William Barclay tells of an old man who, as he lay near death, was 
obviously troubled. When asked what was disturbing him, he 
replied, "One day when I was young I was playing with some other 
boys at a crossroads. We reversed a sign post so that its arms were 
pointing in the wrong direction, and I've never ceased to wonder 
how many people were sent in the wrong direction by what we 
did."

#2
A revival meeting being held was showing no signs of success 
until one evening an elder stood up and said, "Pastor, I don't 
believe there is going to be revival as long as Brother Jones and I 
don't speak to each other." He went to Jones and said: "Brother 
Jones, we have not spoken for five years. Let's bury the hatchet. 
Here's my hand."  And crying broke out in the congregation. Soon 
another elder rose and said: "Pastor, I've been saying mean things 
about you behind your back and nice things to your face. I'm 
asking your forgiveness."  Many more members followed suit, 
confessing their wrongs, and God's presence was felt among them. 
-F. B. Meyer

#3
A man cheated on his income tax returns for years. His conscience 
eventually got the best of him; his guilt would keep him awake late 
into the night. Finally, he sent a letter to the IRS detailing his 
fraud. He ended the letter by saying, "Enclosed please find $500.00 
cash. If I find I am still unable to sleep, I'll send the balance of 
what I owe. Signed, Anonymous."

#4
A man with a nagging secret couldn't keep it any longer.  In the 
confessional he admitted that for years he had been stealing 
building supplies from the lumberyard where he worked. "What 
did you take?" his parish priest asked. "Enough to build my own 
home and enough for my son's house.  And houses for our two 
daughters.  And our cottage at the lake." "This is very serious," the 
priest said. "I shall have to think of a far-reaching penance. Have 
you ever done a retreat?" "No, Father, I haven't," the man replied. 
"But if you can get the plans, I can get the lumber."

#5
"During early childhood I had a fiery temper that often caused me 
to say or do unkind things. One day, after an argument had sent 
one of my playmates home in tears, my father told me that for each 
thoughtless, mean thing I did he would drive a nail into our 
gatepost. Each time I did a kindness or a good deed, one nail 
would be withdrawn. Months passed. Each time I entered our gate, 
I was reminded of the reasons for those ever-increasing nails, until 
finally, getting them out became a challenge. At last the long-
awaited day arrived-only one more nail! As my father withdrew 
it I danced around proudly exclaiming, 'See, Daddy, the nails are 
all gone.' Father gazed intently at the post as he thoughtfully 
replied, 'Yes, the nails are gone-but the scars remain.'" 
-Hazel Farris

#6
Clarence Jordan, in Sermon on the Mount (Judson, 1970), defined 
true fasting as working so hard or being so committed to 
something that we forget to eat. In this view, fasting is a verb form 
of the adverb fast and means to move so quickly and intently 
toward a goal that all else is forgotten.

#7
from the Handbook of the Christian Year :
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ: Christians have always 
observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and 
resurrection. It became the custom of the church to prepare for 
Easter by a season of penitence, fasting, and prayer. This season of 
forty days provided a time in which converts to the faith were 
prepared for baptism into the body of Christ. It is also the time 
when persons who had committed serious sins and had been 
separated from the community of faith were reconciled by 
penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the 
church. The whole congregation is thus reminded of the mercy and 
forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ and the need 
we all have to renew our baptismal faith. (p. 112)

#8
World citizen and contagious Christian Terry Waite entitled his 
autobiography Taken on Trust. In it he recounts his horrendous 
experience as a hostage in Beirut prisons for 1,763 days, almost 
four years of which were in solitary confinement. His first cell, 
underground, was 7 feet by 10 feet.  Because he is 6 feet, 7 inches 
tall, Waite had difficulty standing erect. He learned to sit in a lotus 
position.  Although living in cramped quarters, he made himself 
walk; some days he estimated seven miles. Day and night were 
indistinguishable. He was led to the toilet once a day.
	Early in his "detainment" Terry Waite vowed that his 
captors would not capture his soul. "Whatever is done to my body, 
I will fight to the end to keep my inner freedom." 
	He discovered that fasting increased his spiritual strength.  
His prayer life was consistent and beautiful. From memory, he 
would go through the communion service as recorded in the Book 
of Common Prayer, without the visible sacrament, of course.
	This man, who served as envoy for the archbishop of 
Canterbury for many years and who had personally negotiated 
hostage releases for six years, had at last become one himself.  
Painful as was his condition, he accepted and recited his mantra: 
"No regrets, no sentimentality, no self-pity."

#9
Tolstoy, the great Russian writer, was passing along a street one 
day when a beggar stopped him, pleading for alms. The great 
Russian searched through his pockets for a coin, but finding none, 
he regretfully said, "Please don't be angry with me, my brother. I 
have nothing with me. If I did I would gladly give it to you." The 
beggar's face lit up, and he said, "You have given me more than I 
asked for. You have called me brother."

#10
In the early days of the Republic, an observer once asked a 
congressman how he would be able to distinguish President 
Washington. He was told, "You can easily distinguish him when 
Congress goes to prayer. Washington is the gentleman who 
kneels."

#11
"Prayer is the soul of religion, and failure there is not a superficial 
lack for the supply of which the spiritual life leisurely can wait. 
Failure in prayer is the loss of religion itself in its inward and 
dynamic aspect of fellowship with the Eternal." 
-Harry Emerson Fosdick

#12
My grandmother had prayed first thing in the morning ever since 
she was a girl. But recently she has been reading the newspaper 
first, so I asked her if prayer had become less important to her. 
"Oh, no," she said, "I'm just looking to see what I should pray 
about.

#13
Prayer is less about changing the world than it is about changing 
ourselves. -David J. Wolpe

#14
Richard Foster, in his book entitled Prayer, tells about a man who 
lived in constant fear and bitterness for twenty-eight years. The 
man had trouble getting to sleep at night, and when he did sleep he 
often would wake in a cold sweat, screaming. He had not laughed 
for many years. One day he told his pastor what had happened that 
caused such a deep sadness to hang over him. During World War 
II, he was in charge of thirty-three men. They became trapped by 
enemy gunfire. With deep sorrow in his eyes, the man told of how 
he had prayed desperately that God would get them out of that 
mess. Then, he sent his men out two by two-only to watch them 
get killed. Finally, he was able to escape with six men. From that 
experience he felt that God was very far from him. His heart was 
filled with rage, bitterness, and guilt. His pastor said, "Don't you 
know that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who lives in the eternal 
now, can enter that old painful memory and heal it so that it will no 
longer control you?" Together, the two men prayed that Jesus 
would go back those twenty-eight years and walk through that day 
with him. "Please, Lord," the pastor prayed, "Draw out the hurt and 
the hate and the sorrow and set him free." He asked for peaceful 
sleep to be one of the evidences of his healing work. The next 
week this man had a sparkle in his eyes and a brightness on his 
face. "Every night I have slept soundly and each morning I have 
awakened with a hymn on my mind," he proudly exclaimed. "And 
I am happy-happy for the first time in twenty-eight years." He 
was healed through the power of prayer.

#15
Do you wish your prayer to fly toward God? Give it two wings: 
fasting and almsgiving.
-- Saint Augustine. 

#16
In his book I Surrender, Patrick Morley writes that the church's 
integrity problem is in the misconception "that we can add Christ 
to our lives, but not subtract sin. It is a change in belief without a 
change in behavior." He goes on to say, "It is revival without 
reformation, without repentance." 
Quoted in John The Baptizer, Bible Study Guide by C. Swindoll, 
p. 16

#17
It is not repentance that saves me; repentance is the sign that I 
realize what God has done in Christ Jesus. The danger is to put the 
emphasis on the effect instead of on the cause. Is it my obedience 
that puts me right with God? Never! I am put right with God 
because prior to all else, Christ died. When I turn to God and by 
belief accept what God reveals, instantly the stupendous atonement 
of Jesus Christ rushes me into a right relationship with God. By the 
miracle of God's grace I stand justified, not because of anything I 
have done, but because of what Jesus has done. The salvation of 
God does not stand on human logic; it stands on the sacrificial 
death of Jesus. Sinful men and women can be changed into new 
creatures by the marvelous work of God in Christ Jesus, which is 
prior to all experience. - Oswald Chambers 

#18
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. 
We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity. 
We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation 
has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the 
gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and 
enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the 
deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced 
by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with 
unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the 
necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to 
God that made us It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before 
the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for 
clemency and forgiveness. 
President Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of 
Fasting, Humliation and Prayer, April 30, 1863

#19
It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to 
repent of those we intend to commit. - Josh Billings 

#20
If there are a thousand steps between us and God, God will take all 
but one. God will leave the final one for us. The choice is ours. - 
Max Lucado 

#21
"What's wrong with the world?" a newspaper editorial once asked. 
G. K. Chesterton wrote in reply, "I am." 

#22
"Several years ago our family visited Niagara Falls. It was 
spring, and ice was rushing down the river. As I viewed the 
large blocks of ice flowing toward the falls, I could see that 
there were carcasses of dead fish embedded in the ice. 
Gulls by the score were riding down the river feeding on 
the fish. As they came to the brink of the falls, their wings 
would go out, and they would escape from the falls. 
"I watched one gull which seemed to delay and wondered 
when it would leave. It was engrossed in the carcass of a 
fish, and when it finally came to the brink of the falls, out 
went its powerful wings. The bird flapped and flapped and 
even lifted the ice out of the water, and I thought it would 
escape. But it had delayed too long so that its claws had 
frozen into the ice. The weight of the ice was too great, and 
the gull plunged into the abyss." 
Dr. George Sweeting, in Special Sermons For Special Days

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