I watched a TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) video yesterday afternoon. The speaker was Billy Graham. In 1998, he was invited to speak and he took the message of salvation to a group of people that don't hear that message very often.
As he was warming up the crowd, before he had even got to the depth of his speech, he was telling short stories on himself and one of them struck me.
He told the story of how he was on an airplane. There was a gentleman who was drunk and disturbing the other passengers with his behavior. He was harassing the flight attendant, smacking her, pinching her and generally making a fool of himself. Another man had finally had it and said to the drunk, "Do you know that Billy Graham is on this flight?" The drunk turned around, saw Billy Graham and said, "Well, I'll be" as he stuck his hand out to shake Billy's hand. It was his next comment that floored me, "Your sermons have really helped me."
The audience laughed and realized that Billy Graham was inviting them to laugh at himself as he connected with them just a little bit. But, for as many people as that man has touched over the long years of his ministry, there are so many that are like that drunk. They took in his words, allowed them to flow through, but didn't bother to live as if those words had any influence in his life.
The rest of the talk is about how technology can change a lot of things in this world, but it will never be able to remove evil, suffering and death from the world. Only Jesus Christ can do that.
This video is about 26 minutes long, but the message Billy Graham delivers is worth the time.
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