Urgency

A 71-year-old Swedish man was in his driveway shoveling snow in the Swedish city of Trollhättan, when he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. Normally, you have about ten minutes to get help in such a situation and ambulance response times are often too long to save the life of the patient. Typically, only ten percent of people survive sudden cardiac arrest.

Luckily, a telephone call was immediately placed requesting emergency services and the man lived in a region that had partnered with Everdrone’s innovative life-saving program. Everdrones deliver an automated external defibrillator (AED) to the scene. The amount of time from the alarm until the AED was safely delivered at the doorstep of the incident address was just over three minutes.

Even more fortuitous, a doctor happened to be driving by and stopped to see if he could help. Dr. Mustafa Ali said, “I was on my way to work at the local hospital when I looked out the car window and saw a man collapsed in his driveway and I immediately rushed to help. The man had no pulse, so I started doing CPR while asking another bystander to call the Swedish emergency number. Just minutes later, I saw something flying above my head. It was a drone with a defibrillator!”

After the initial treatment on site, the ambulance arrived, the patient was rushed to the hospital. “This is a truly revolutionary technology that needs to be implemented all over,” said the patient who now has made a full recovery and returned home. “If it wasn’t for the drone I probably wouldn’t be here.”

The company behind the drone pilot project says it’s the first time in medical history that a drone has played a crucial part in saving a life during a cardiac arrest. The drone carries an ultralight defibrillator, which can be used by any bystander.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Good Samaritan; Social Action – We should always be ready to speed help to others in time of need; 2) Action; Help from God; Prayer, answered – When God decides to take action, he moves faster than we can imagine, help is immediate (Isa. 65:24).

Six in 10 Gen Zers and Millennials have a complicated relationship—with their cars. A recent survey of Gen Z and Millennial car owners reveals that it takes an average of eight warning lights for them to schedule vehicle maintenance. However, one in four tend to disregard and continue driving with broken speakers or a radio, excessive emissions, low tire pressure light, oil change, or scratches on their vehicle’s body or windshield.

Two out of three say they’re OK with their car not being up to par as long as it passes a state-licensed safety test. On average, it takes five breakdowns for Gen Zers and Millennials to buy a new car.

People stop driving their car and get a new one when the upkeep surpasses their budget (39%), there are too many strange sounds or smells (38%), too many parts have to be replaced (37%), or too much of it is being held together by tape (37%).

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is also true for most people in their spiritual lives, regardless of their age. They will ignore the warning signs and continue with sinful behavior as long as they think they are managing to “hold it together” and get by with it.

Bill Scott spends hours on his ham radio every day. He takes it on walks, vacations, and even social gatherings. Over his 40 years of being an amateur radio operator, he has communicated with people everywhere from South Africa to the Space Station.

This past June, he received a phone call and recognized the voice on the other end. Scott said, “It was all kind of skewed and everything. I thought it was a prank call at first. The voice said, ‘You are an amateur radio operator.’ He said ‘Yeah’ and then it all started coming together.”

His ham radio friend, Skip Kritcher, 500 miles away in Myrtle Point, Oregon dialed Bill’s number by mistake. Scott said Kritcher was on the floor and in need of help. Kirtcher later said, “I couldn’t see the numbers too good on the cell phone and I wound up pushing the button and calling Bill.”

Scott’s wife Sharon, a retired nurse of nearly 60 years, quickly realized Kritcher was having a stroke. She explained, “The speech that he had was slurred and my husband couldn’t seem to keep him on task, and he was confused.”

The line dropped, and that’s when the Scotts called 9-1-1. The couple had been to Kritcher’s house before and knew where to direct first responders to his house. A family member of Kritcher told the Scotts their quick actions saved his life. Sharon Scott said, “The family member said that the EMT told her that he would’ve died within a couple of hours. It was just a miracle that he called the wrong number and he got us and we were able to do something to help him.”

A life was saved by long-distance friendship.

In what may be one of the most Italian things that has ever happened, the Italian State Police rushed a donor kidney from Padua to Rome for a transplant in a Lamborghini Huracan. The journey is around 300 miles, but with the help of a specially-outfitted supercar, the police made it happen in just about two hours at an average speed of 143 mph—and that’s a journey that normally takes around six.

Yes, the Italian Police own a Lamborghini and use it as a regular ol’ patrol vehicle most of the time. It’s outfitted with lights, a police computer, and other equipment for traffic stops and arrests. That said, though, the machine isn’t exactly ideal for the day-to-day (where, exactly, do you intend to put someone that you’ve arrested?). It’s still cool for these more extreme circumstances, though.

But for this specific instance, the “frunk” (front trunk) came in handy. The police force turned it into a refrigerated compartment for organ transport for the delivery of other temperature-sensitive medical supplies. With a 202-mph top speed and a 0-60 time of 2.8 seconds, it’s one efficient vehicle for these high-speed runs.

The Italian police actually own a few different Lambos. It’s a pretty solid use of a supercar, although folks on Twitter have wondered why Italian officials didn’t use a helicopter to transport the kidney. A Google Maps view of the starting hospital, doesn’t seem to show a helipad or an easily accessible flat area nearby, so a Lamborghini likely made the most sense here.

I hope the receiver of the kidney knows how it was transported. I know that, personally, I’d work to make sure that kidney is well-appreciated for as long as it lasts.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Good Samaritan; Social Action – We should always be ready to speed help to others in time of need; 2) Action; Help from God; Prayer, answered – When God decides to take action, he moves faster than we can imagine, help is immediate (Isa. 65:24).

In a sermon, the Reverend Ethan Magness quoted the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard who told this parable:

A crowded theater hosted a variety show, with various acts in it. Each act was more fantastic than the one prior, so it created louder and louder applause from the audience. Suddenly, a clown rushed on to the stage and said, “I apologize for this interruption, but I regret to inform you that our theater is on fire! You need to leave right away, and in an orderly fashion.”

But the audience thought he was part of the act, so they laughed and applauded. They thought he was very committed to the role. But the clown again implored them that they needed to leave right away or they would get seriously injured, maybe even die. And again, they greeted him with loud and thunderous applause. At last, he could do no more, and so he left the building, and the people were destroyed.

And Kierkegaard concludes in this sobering way: “Our age will go down in fiery destruction not to the sound of mourning but to applause and cheering.”

Tilly Smith and her family relaxed on the beach. Their first family vacation had taken them to Thailand. That morning, ten-year-old Tilly, her parents, and sister Holly, went for a walk along Mai Khao beach. They enjoyed the warm breeze in their faces and felt the sand squish in between their toes.

Two weeks prior to their holiday, Tilly had learned about tsunamis in her geography class. She did not find geography tantalizing, but the video her teacher showed had caught her attention. So, as Tilly and her family walked the beach, she noticed the waves going out but not coming in.

Tilly alerted her parents that they were surrounded by signs that something unusual and cataclysmic would occur. At first they were dismissive, but Tilly's passion and persistence paid off. She began shouting, "There is going to be a tsunami!"

Now, what would you do if you were on vacation with your family and your ten-year-old daughter started screaming on the beach that a tsunami was about to strike? Tilly shouted louder and louder, and her panic frightened her younger sister, who began to sob hysterically.

I imagine the volume increasing with her parents saying something like, "Tilly, calm down! It will be okay. You're scaring your sister! Get yourself under control, now!" Tilly's dad took Holly back to the hotel to calm her down. But Tilly looked around and saw the people in the ocean, on the sand, and just knew in her heart that everyone was in danger. Tilly ran back to the hotel to find her dad talking with a security guard. He said, "I know this sounds completely mad, but my daughter says there's going to be a tsunami.”

The security guard listened not to a PhD candidate, brain surgeon, or NASA scientist but to a passionate plea coming from a ten-year-old British schoolgirl. The guard listened and then shouted for people to get off the beach. People scattered all over the place as pandemonium set in. The hotel lobby, on a higher floor, became a gathering place

A tsunami, triggered by an earthquake at the floor of the Indian Ocean, struck. This tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people. But not one person from Tilly's beach died that we know of. Tilly's dad, in shock after learning of the horrific devastation and suffering, said to Tilly, "What if we hadn't listened to you?"

Solving a common entrepreneurial challenge, eleven-year-old Seth Parker found an easy way to generate interest in his fledgling enterprise, and all he had to do was include a little fine print.

Passersby saw Parker standing next to a soda stand with a sign that read “ICE COLD BEER” in large letters. Eventually one of them called police, who came to check on the boy. Upon further inspection, they saw he had inserted, in small print, the word “root.” Parker was not selling alcohol, but IBC-brand root beer.

The responding officers were so impressed with Parker’s chutzpah and salesmanship, they posed for a picture with the boy, and posted it to the department Facebook page, which received over ten thousand likes and shares.

Potential Preaching Angle: Though we shouldn't build our ministries on a foundation of deception, misdirection and humor can help create opportunities that might not otherwise exist. Jesus commended his believers in being innovative in recognizing the urgency of kingdom business.

A Dutch astronaut has described how he accidentally contacted American emergency services on 911 while in orbit above the Earth. Astronaut André Kuipers described the experience while speaking on a radio program about his missions and communications between the Earth, satellites, and astronauts orbiting the planet.

Kuipers explained that while trying to contact NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, he missed an all-important number and accidentally called the US emergency services. He said that to reach the center in Houston, orbiting astronauts have to dial 9 for an outside line, followed by 011 for an international line. But of course, doing so while floating around in space is trickier than from a desk on Earth. “I made a mistake, and the next day I received an email message: Did you call 911?”

His communication slip-up set off a security alert at the Houston center. The emergency staff began by checking the room where the space station’s line connected to Earth before discovering that the source of the call was from orbit. Kuipers explained that it is surprisingly easy to communicate with Earth while aboard a space station in orbit. He said astronauts can reach terrestrial phones via satellites around 70 percent of the time. “I was a little disappointed that they had not come up,” he joked.

While there are a variety of obvious technical limitations for emergency services to respond to a call more than 200 miles above earth, it's still nice to know that even in space, 911 is there to help.

Possible preaching angle:

1) Prayer; Omnipresence of God – It is very reassuring to know that believers are never too far to be out of touch with God’s help in time of emergency. 2) Error; Forgiveness; Mistakes – God never condemns an honest mistake. He remembers that we are imperfect (Psalm 103:14) and prone to error.

Colman Mockler is considered today as the model of an effective CEO. A Harvard Business School graduate with an MBA, he had gone to work for Gillette Corporation and steadily worked his way up the ladder to CEO.

Although Gillette was 75 years old, Colman took the company to new heights of success. Under his management they came to dominate the market. After 16 years as CEO, Colman was at the top of the world. Forbes magazine had put him on the cover of their next issue celebrating his leadership and success. The magazine wouldn't hit the newsstands for another week, but on the morning of January 25th, 1991 they had sent him an advance copy to review. The rest of the executives literally applauded him as he carried the magazine back to his office. In so many ways it was a fantastically good day for Colman.

Decades of hard work had brought him to this point. He had beaten back three hostile takeover bids and revolutionized the company. He had increased the value of the stock 50-fold. He was, literally, celebrated on the cover of the business world. And with millions in the bank, he had just announced that he would be retiring within a few months.

But there was one thing that made it an unexpectedly tragic day. With the staff applauding, Colman walked down the hall, stepped into his office, shut the door, and crumpled to the floor. Within moments he was dead of a massive heart attack, still clutching the Forbes magazine that featured him on the cover.

Possible Preaching Angles: Death; Life, short; Mortality—"Every single one of us is going to come to the end of our days. No matter how successful, powerful, or acclaimed, we will arrive there, just the same. And when you do it will seem to have come quicker than expected."

In an interview with Esquire, the actor and film director Clint Eastwood and his son Scott both agreed that they never look back on life. When Esquire asked, "Clint, if you were going to look at your life as material, how would you describe the narrative?" the senior Eastwood said, "I don't look at my life too much. I'm always looking forward, not backward. A lot of times people get to a certain age and they quit." The younger Eastwood agreed, chiming in, "I just do what he does: Keep moving forward. You can't look back or think about that kind of stuff too much. You just keep making movies …"

But later in the interview, as soon as Scott left the room, Clint Eastwood offered a different take on not looking back on life. In a moment of utter candor, the elder Eastwood confessed:

You always wonder if you could've done more. You could've spent a little more time with [my son], a little more attention. I had that regret when my dad died. Because it was sudden. I didn't know; it wasn't like he had an ailment or something. I used to live close enough to him that I could've dropped in a lot more. I never did and I was busy, always busy, doing all the films.

Possible Preaching Angles: As much as we try, we cannot avoid living life without some regrets and without the need for forgiveness.

In his book My Name Is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok's main character is an awakening artist, beginning to see the world with a different perspective. The author captures a simple moment at a family dinner from the emerging artist's point of view:

That was the night I began to realize that something was happening to my eyes. I looked at my father and saw lines and planes I had never seen before. I could feel with my eyes. I could feel my eyes moving across the lines around his eyes and into and over the deep furrows on his forehead. He was thirty-five years old, and there were lines on his face and forehead. I could feel the lines with my eyes and feel, too, the long straight flat bridge of his nose and the clear darkness of his eyes and the strong thick curves of the red eyebrows and the thick red hair of his beard graying a little—I saw the stray gray strands in the tangle of hair below his lips. I could feel lines and points and planes. I could feel texture and color …. I felt myself flooded with the shapes and textures of the world around me. I closed my eyes. But I could still see that way inside my head. I was seeing with another pair of eyes that had suddenly come awake.

What if we changed the way we looked at people? What if we paid attention to people with a new set of eyes that "suddenly came awake"? Might we see the helpless and hopeless condition of people with whom we come into contact every day? Noticing may be the first step in bringing someone the good news about Jesus and the kingdom of God … We begin to see others, ourselves, and even God differently. People we never noticed before (because we never paid attention to them) quite suddenly matter to us in ways we can't explain.

It may seem like the European Union has enough on its hands these days, but a local news story seems to be adding insult to injury. The capital city's infrastructure is in dire need of repair, and congested roadways that pass through tunnels are at the heart of it. However, the scheduled repair of these crumbling tunnel structures has been delayed—not by legislation or budget, but by mice. The construction plans, stored in pillars under a motorway bridge, have disappeared during the decade of waiting for construction to begin. According to former city infrastructure department head, "They may have been eaten by mice."

Possible Preaching Angle:

This embarrassing consequence of waiting too long is one that applies to many scenarios, but perhaps none more serious than in matters of faith and spirituality. Jesus himself says that the Son will return like a thief in the night—swiftly and surely. We must be certain to not let our families, friends, or even ourselves think that "there's always time" to make a decision about following God. At some point, it will be too late.

American novelist John Grisham was an attorney who hated his job. He wanted to become an author, but he didn't know where to begin. Finally, he decided to start by writing a one-word message to himself on the early-morning squares of his monthly calendar: "Write." Grisham said to himself, "I'm going to get to work sixty minutes early each day, and I'm going to write just one page per day." And that's what he did.

He started getting up an hour earlier during the week and showing up at his desk an hour before the normal start time at his firm. He began writing … and he kept writing. Today, he is one of the most prolific and appreciated novelists of our day. That's the power of even a single word written on a schedule and lived out. What is the single word that you need to write on your weekly, daily, or monthly calendar?

When Timex (the watch company) asked people how long they would wait before taking action in a wide variety of situations, researchers discovered that we'll consent to wait only:

• thirteen seconds before we honk at a car in front of us that's stopped at a green light;
• twenty-six seconds before we shush people who are talking in a movie theater;
• twenty-six seconds before we take the seat of someone who's walked away;
• forty-five seconds before we ask someone who's talking too loud on a cell phone to "keep it down";
• thirteen minutes for a table at a restaurant;
• twenty minutes for a blind date to show up before we leave;
• and twenty minutes for the last person to show up for Thanksgiving dinner before we dig in.

In the 2013 film, Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone, played by Sandra Bullock, is a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky, played by Georg Clooney. On a routine spacewalk, the shuttle is destroyed by a freak hail of space debris, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone. According to one description of the film, "They are tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness. The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth ... and any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space."

After the film's release, the German magazine Der Spiegel asked 69-year-old German astronaut Ulrich Walter to fact-check the film. Walter said that after becoming completely untethered, Sandra Bullock's character would have died. The interviewer commented, "That doesn't sound like a very nice way to go, drifting through nothingness in a spacesuit, waiting to die."

But Ulrich replied, "When you're slowly running out of oxygen, the same thing happens as does when you're in thin air at the top of a mountain: Everything seems funny. And as you're laughing about it, you slowly nod off. I experienced this phenomenon in an altitude chamber during my training as an astronaut. At some point, someone in the group starts cracking bad jokes … A person who dies alone in space dies a cheerful death." In other words, your situation is hopeless, you're slowly dying, but you think it's funny.

Possible Preaching Angles: Is it possible that our entire culture is, in many ways, cut off from our spiritual oxygen supply, "drifting through nothingness, waiting to die" and yet "everything seems funny"? Is this an example of what Neil Postman called "amusing ourselves to death"?

The Tikker is a wristwatch that counts down your life so you can make every second count. The Tikker allows you to watch as a dot-matrix screen displays the seconds you have left on earth as they disappear down a black hole. Your estimated time of death is, of course, just that—an estimate. Tikker uses an algorithm like the one used by the federal government to figure a person's life expectancy and then converts that into a countdown of the years, months, days, minutes, and seconds you have left on this earth. The effect is sobering, a sort of incessant grim reaper reminding you that time is running out.

Tikker's inventor is a Swede named Fredrik Colting. He says he invented the gadget not as a morbid novelty item, but as an earnest attempt to change his own thinking. Colting, a former gravedigger, said, "The occurrence of death is no surprise to anyone, but in our modern society we rarely talk about it. I think that if we were more aware of our own expiration I'm sure we'd make better choices while we are alive." That's why he calls Tikker "the happiness watch." It's his belief that watching your life slip away will remind you to savor life while you have it.