{"id":52438,"date":"1998-08-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1998-08-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/linus-and-lucy-and-encouragement\/"},"modified":"1998-08-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1998-08-01T00:00:00","slug":"linus-and-lucy-and-encouragement","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/linus-and-lucy-and-encouragement\/","title":{"rendered":"Linus and Lucy and Encouragement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The king of the comics, as far as I&#39;m concerned, is still <em>Peanuts<\/em> by Charles Schulz. I love Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Pigpen, the Little Red-Haired Girl, and Charlie Brown. There&#39;s a ring of reality to their relationships.<\/p>\n\n<p>One sequence comes to mind. Linus has just written a comic strip of his own, and he wants Lucy&#39;s opinion. In the first frame, he tentatively hands Lucy his comic strip and says, &quot;Lucy, would you read this and tell me if you think it is funny?&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>In the next frame, you see Lucy patting her foot, and a little bit of a grin comes across her face. She looks at Linus and says, &quot;Well, Linus, who wrote this?&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>Linus with his chest heaved out and a great big grin says, &quot;Lucy, I wrote that.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>In the next frame, you see Lucy wadding it up, throwing it to the side, and saying, &quot;Well, then, I don&#39;t think it&#39;s very funny.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>In the final frame, you see Linus picking up his comic strip, throwing his blanket over his shoulder, looking at Lucy and saying, &quot;Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>We find that humorous. I dare say if you and I thought long and hard enough, we&#39;d remember being the crab grass in the lawn of somebody else&#39;s life. None of us wants to be a loser. None of us wants to be a source of discouragement. And yet, if we&#39;re not careful, we can find ourselves being more pessimistic than optimistic, more discouraging than encouraging.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[310],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[406,411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3717,3797,3862,3982,4021,4637],"tax_ctp_topics":[378,384,396],"class_list":["post-52438","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-criticism","tax_ctp_tags-discouragement","tax_ctp_tags-encouragement","tax_ctp_tags-fellowship","tax_ctp_tags-friendship","tax_ctp_tags-pessimism"],"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}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Linus and Lucy and Encouragement - 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\/linus-and-lucy-and-encouragement\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Linus and Lucy and Encouragement - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The king of the comics, as far as I&#039;m concerned, is still Peanuts by Charles Schulz. 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