The Next Mile (Sermon Illustration)
Trying to do something big is intimidating. A lot of people fail before they begin because they think the task is too big for them. But what if we just focused on one small thing at a time that is needed to accomplish the big thing?
Eric Sevareid, a well-known war-time correspondent and author, told Reader’s Digest that the best advice he ever received was the rule of the “next mile.” Here’s a portion of what he said:
“During World War II, I and several others had to parachute chute from a crippled army transport plane into the mountainous jungle of the Burma-India border. It was several weeks before an armed relief expedition could reach us, and then we began a painful, plodding march “out” to civilized India. We were faced by a 140-mile trek, over mountains, in August heat and monsoon rains. In the first hour of the march, I rammed a boot nail deep into one foot; by evening I had bleeding blisters the size of a 50-cent piece on both feet. Could I hobble 140 miles? Could the others, some in worse shape than I, complete such a distance? We were convinced we could not. But we could hobble to that ridge. We could make the next friendly village for the night. And that, of course, was all we had to do…”
Nelson Search, Launch: Starting a New Church from Scratch (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2007), 63-64.
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