{"id":36417,"date":"2022-08-05T12:02:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T12:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/colin-powell-couldnt-fix-cancer-or-death\/"},"modified":"2022-08-05T12:02:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T12:02:00","slug":"colin-powell-couldnt-fix-cancer-or-death","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/colin-powell-couldnt-fix-cancer-or-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin Powell Couldn\u2019t Fix Cancer or Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Colin Powell, the great American military leader, was also a life-long fixer. According to an obituary in the <em>New York Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Until his final days, Colin L. Powell remained preoccupied with fixing things. The former secretary of state and four-star general tinkered endlessly in his garage &mdash; sometimes with his welder and sometimes on a succession of [automobiles]. He was a regular at the neighborhood hardware store in McLean, Va., where he rummaged through parts for his house&rsquo;s malfunctioning dishwasher or leaky faucets.<\/p>\n<p>His plywood-and-wire fixes often left something to be desired aesthetically. But they satisfied his &hellip; compulsion to repair rather than discard what was broken. When he was fixing things, one longtime friend said, &ldquo;there was a result at the end of the day. It&rsquo;s why he was so happy as an Army officer: You take a platoon, and you make it better.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>But there were some things he couldn&rsquo;t fix. In 2019, he was diagnosed with plasma-cell cancer. He died in October 2021. He also admitted that were a lot of things broken in this world that neither he nor the United States could fix. Once he told his assistant: &ldquo;Going into the garage, I can see that the carburetor is the problem and fix it&mdash;unlike foreign policy, where nothing gets resolved. You&rsquo;re just spending four years doing the best you can.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\">Possible Preaching Angles:<\/h2>\n\n<p><strong>(1) Servanthood; Leadership<\/strong>&mdash;Use the first part of this illustration to show how servants or leaders take what they&rsquo;re given and make it better. <strong>(2) Death or Brokenness<\/strong>&mdash;Use the full illustration to highlight how even someone as competent as Powell, a lifelong fixer, was powerless to fix death or to fix the world&rsquo;s brokenness.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[446],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3524,3542,3737,3766,3799,4087,4168,4209,4350,4351,4660,4952,4971,5303],"tax_ctp_topics":[384],"class_list":["post-36417","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-brokenness","tax_ctp_tags-cancer","tax_ctp_tags-death","tax_ctp_tags-despair","tax_ctp_tags-disease","tax_ctp_tags-government","tax_ctp_tags-hopelessness","tax_ctp_tags-illness","tax_ctp_tags-leader","tax_ctp_tags-leadership","tax_ctp_tags-politics","tax_ctp_tags-servanthood","tax_ctp_tags-sickness","tax_ctp_tags-worldview"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Colin Powell Couldn\u2019t Fix Cancer or Death - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/colin-powell-couldnt-fix-cancer-or-death\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Colin Powell Couldn\u2019t Fix Cancer or Death - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Colin Powell, the great American military leader, was also a life-long fixer. According to an obituary in the New York Times: Until his final days, Colin L. Powell remained preoccupied with fixing things. 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