It's Saturday evening and you, the preacher, are feeling great. But your sermon isn't. As you began preparing it earlier in the week, Sunday's message seemed in average health. However, by Friday afternoon you noticed a paleness in the introduction that gave reason for concern. Not until a quick re-read this morning did you detect a slight fever in your second point, and then you discovered a dull ache in the conclusion.

Immediate medical attention is necessary, of course, since the sermon is scheduled to appear with you at a public gathering at 11:00 tomorrow morning. Everyone is expecting both you and the sermon to be present -- and spiritually healthy. On such short notice, finding another sermon to "fill in" is unwise, if not unachievable. No, needed most now is a cure for this one, and you are the only sermon doctor in the house.

Where will you begin? Listing all symptoms is probably the first priority. Then, providing an accurate diagnosis. Finally, you can administer some rewrite medication, and wait the long night to see how the recovering sermon feels in the morning.

Perhaps the single sermonic element most susceptible to affliction is the illustration. Even sermons with solid skeletal structure and firm biblical muscle can stumble along unless well-placed illustrations maintain listener attention and message applicability. Fortunately some "ill"ustrative symptoms, and the viruses or more long-term diseases they indicate, are easily diagnosed and treatable.

The Common Cold: Illustrative material suffering from the common cold usually experiences sensory maladies. Healthy illustrations allow listeners to "see," "hear," "smell," "taste," and "touch." Descriptive language brings illustrations to life, transporting the listeners to the very location or event being related, or introducing them to a historical figure or practice which proves insightful.

No cure for the common human cold yet exists, but in sermons this virus can be remedied by specificity and vivid description. A few helpful exercises to develop picturesque speech are reading fiction aloud, rehearsing for a friend or spouse a childhood memory in rich detail, or typing a complete manuscript of your next sermon and circling all adjectives and adverbs.

Last year, I used the 1987 rescue story of two-year-old "Baby Jessica" (Jessica McClure) from an eight-inch well shaft in Midland, Texas. Because it had been nearly a decade since the vivid televised scenes of her rescue, a recreation of the harrowing and heartwarming event was necessary. When my listeners "saw" Jessica's painfully cramped position, "heard" and "smelled" the loud grinding of drilling equipment, and "touched" the baby with the exhausted rescue worker who wrapped her in his dirty arms moments before bringing her to the surface, that's when this illustration of salvation dramatically reminded them of God's saving rescue of fallen humanity. Just as the five senses allow us to experience the fullness of our environment, they also bring reality into our illustrations.