Stories &amp; Illustrations

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31Universal

George Washington Carver and the Wisdom Woven into a Peanut

In 1921, George Washington Carver stood before the United States Congress with a box of peanut products — milk, flour, dyes, wood stains, face cream...

246 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Closed Bible and the Open Door

Every Sunday morning for thirty years, Margaret Chen arrived early at her church in Knoxville, Tennessee, polishing the communion table and arranging the hymnals with...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

265 words

The Blind Woman Who Sang Her Way Through the Gates

When Fanny Crosby was only six weeks old, a doctor's mistake left her permanently blind. She never once saw a sunrise, a flower, or the...

Psalm 100Universal

234 words

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

The Bridge They Built From Condemned Steel

In 2009, a construction crew in Pittsburgh demolished the old Civic Arena, and thousands of tons of structural steel sat in a salvage yard, tagged...

244 words

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

The Code Writer Who Found a Signature

In June 2000, Francis Collins stood in the East Room of the White House and announced that the Human Genome Project had completed its first...

241 words

Kagawa and the Shinkawa Slums

On Christmas Day, 1909, a twenty-one-year-old Japanese seminary student named Toyohiko Kagawa moved into a six-foot-by-six-foot shack in the Shinkawa slums of Kobe. The neighborhood...

227 words

Colossians 1:15-17Universal

The Source Behind Every Green Thing

Every leaf on earth is a tiny solar panel. The oak outside your kitchen window, the grass beneath your feet, the basil on your windowsill...

The Laundromat on Franklin Avenue

Every Tuesday night, Maria Santos unlocks the doors of Spin Cycle Laundromat on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis and puts up a hand-lettered sign: "Free Wash...

230 words

The Echo That Would Not Be Silenced

In 1964, two radio astronomers at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey — Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson — encountered a problem they could not...

Genesis 1:1-3Universal

223 words

R.G. LeTourneau and the Reversed Tithe

In 1935, a Texas earthmoving contractor named R.G. LeTourneau made a decision that his accountant called reckless. Already tithing ten percent of his income, LeTourneau...

Malachi 3:10Universal

209 words

The Courtroom That Fell Silent

Margaret Chen sat in courtroom 4B of the Cook County courthouse, hands trembling in her lap. For three years, the weight of what she had...

Romans 8:1Universal

234 words

The Woman Who Saw Light Without Eyes

Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old due to a doctor's error. She lived ninety-four years in total darkness — and wrote over...

Psalm 36:5-10Universal

232 words

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

The Cartographer Who Mapped What He Could Not See

In 1507, Martin Waldseemuller produced the first map to label the newly discovered continent "America." Working from his small workshop in Saint-Die-des-Vosges, France, he painstakingly...

243 words

Psalm 78:1-2, 34-38Universal

The Town That Kept Forgetting

In the winter of 1734, something extraordinary swept through Northampton, Massachusetts. Under Jonathan Edwards's preaching, nearly three hundred townspeople professed faith within six months. Longtime...

215 words

The Optometrist Who Couldn't Read the Sign

Dr. Margaret Chen spent thirty-two years fitting lenses and diagnosing cataracts at her clinic on Maple Avenue in Rochester, Minnesota. She could spot astigmatism in...

John 9:1-41Universal

238 words

The Grandmother Who Never Expected to Hold a Child Again

Margaret Ellison sat in a plastic chair at Riverside Community Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, convinced she had outlived every good thing. Her husband, Carl, had...

Ruth 4:14Universal

The Millionaire Who Traded His Fortune for a Hammer

By age twenty-nine, Millard Fuller was a self-made millionaire. He owned a mansion in Montgomery, Alabama, a Lincoln Continental, a lake house, and a cattle...

222 words

The Slow River That Carved the Canyon

In 1869, John Wesley Powell strapped himself to a wooden chair bolted to the deck of a small boat and led nine men into the...

Nahum 1:3Universal

The Wi-Fi That Runs Through the Walls

In 2018, a small church in Christchurch, New Zealand, shared a building with a Korean Presbyterian congregation. They worshiped at different hours, spoke different languages,...

John 17:20-26Universal

244 words

The Astronomer Who Followed a Different Light

In 2015, NASA scientist Lucianne Walkowicz stood before a TED audience and said something that stopped the room cold: the most important discoveries happen when...

Matthew 2:1-12Universal

235 words

The Astronomer Who Heard the Planets Sing

In 1619, Johannes Kepler published a book with a remarkable claim: the planets were singing. The German astronomer had spent years charting the orbits of...

Psalm 98Universal

233 words

Revelation 21:1-4Universal

The House Betsie Saw

In December 1944, Betsie ten Boom lay dying on a filthy mattress in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her body was skeletal, her skin covered in sores....

Frederick Douglass and the Price of Permanent Freedom

In 1838, Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in Maryland by disguising himself as a free Black sailor and boarding a northbound train. He was free —...

Hebrews 9:11-15Universal

255 words

Kagawa's Six-Foot Room

In 1909, a young Japanese seminary student named Toyohiko Kagawa did something his professors could not understand. He left his comfortable dormitory in Kobe and...