Here is a story I heard at dinner that I think I could turn into a good sermon illustration some time, and don’t want to forget it. It came up because a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, received a ticket in the mail that he didn’t know he was getting.
“There was a man who ran a red light. It was one of those red lights with cameras on it, and sure enough, he received a ticket in the mail. The man was irate. It was his opinion that it wasn’t right to get an automated ticket. A real person had not witnessed the event, but only a picture of the event. After careful consideration, he wrote a check to pay for the ticket. He then took a picture of his check and put the picture in the mail.”
This story is pretty raw right now, but with a little more work, it might be fleshed out into a story that illustrates that our presence is important to us and to God. I would have to rework it a little. It needs some dialogue or something to get into the man’s head and I want to make sure the story is not about whether or not we should break the law or accusing our hard working law enforcement officers of not doing their job. Instead, I think the value of the story lies with the impersonal nature of the event… a real person didn’t write him a ticket, so he didn’t send a real check.
