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Home›Browse by Type›Stories & Illustrations

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Stories & Illustrations

6,717 illustrations — Vivid stories and real-world analogies for sermon use

Browse Stories & Illustrations by Book

Psalm (81)Luke (49)Matthew (42)John (36)1 Corinthians (31)Romans (29)Isaiah (29)Genesis (25)Acts (24)Hebrews (17)Ephesians (16)Revelation (14)Jeremiah (14)Galatians (10)Colossians (10)Mark (9)Philippians (8)2 Corinthians (8)Proverbs (7)James (7)

Sermon Illustration

The Laundromat on Cypress Avenue

For eleven years, Maria Gutierrez ran a laundromat in East Oakland that should have gone under twice. The margins were razor-thin. A bigger chain opened...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

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Sermon Illustration

When the Evidence Arrives on Stretchers

For nearly fifty years, Mother Teresa carried a secret. Letters published after her death revealed that the woman the world celebrated as a saint of...

Matthew 11:2-11Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Quiet Table

A few years ago, chef and restaurant owner Marcus Samuelsson told an interviewer about a lesson he learned from his grandmother in Ethiopia. She would...

Luke 10:38-42Universal

Sermon Illustration

A Name No One Expected

In 2019, Maria Gonzalez stood in a hospital room in San Antonio, Texas, holding her newborn son. Her mother-in-law had already monogrammed blankets with the...

Luke 1:57-66, 80Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Couple Who Said Yes to Someone Else's Baby

In 2019, a nurse named Marcus and his wife Elaine in Memphis, Tennessee, were finishing a quiet dinner when a social worker called. A newborn...

Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24aUniversal

Sermon Illustration

Pandita Ramabai and the Courage of a Convert

In 1883, Pandita Ramabai was the most celebrated Hindu woman in India. Scholars had given her the title "Pandita" — learned one — an honor...

Romans 1:16Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Crossing Guard on Maple Street

For eleven years, Dorothy Chen stood at the corner of Maple and Third in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, guiding children safely across the street. She knew...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Dawn Chorus at Muir Woods

Every morning, about forty minutes before sunrise, something remarkable happens in the ancient redwood groves of Muir Woods, California. A single bird — usually a...

Psalm 100Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Village That Refused to Go Dark

In the winter of 1941, Pastor André Trocmé stood before his congregation in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small village in the mountains of southern France, and...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

Sermon Illustration

Bonhoeffer's Return to the Darkness

In June 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood on the deck of a ship bound for New York, watching the German coastline disappear. Friends had arranged a...

Matthew 4:12-23Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Scholar Who Found Living Water at Mukti

In 1878, Pandita Ramabai stood before the scholars of Calcutta — the first woman in India to earn the title "Pandita," a Sanskrit scholar of...

John 4:5-42Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Farmer's Almanac on Margaret's Kitchen Table

Every March, Margaret Calloway of Boone County, Kentucky, set her worn Farmer's Almanac on the kitchen windowsill and planned her garden by the sun. She...

James 1:17Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Elder's Command

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's *The Brothers Karamazov*, young Alyosha Karamazov has found everything he longs for inside the monastery walls. He loves his Elder, Father Zosima,...

Universalobedience

Sermon Illustration

The Pump That Had to Be Primed

On a dusty farmstead outside Abilene, Kansas, there stands an old cast-iron hand pump — the kind with a long lever and a rusted spout....

Malachi 3:10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Shepherd on the Colca Canyon Ridge

Maria Quispe was seven years old the first time her father took her to tend alpacas along the rim of Peru's Colca Canyon. The drop...

Psalm 121Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Car Seat in the Hatchback

Keisha Williams was twenty-three, working double shifts at the hospital in Macon, Georgia, when the social worker called on a Tuesday evening. A newborn —...

Luke 1:26-38Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Lot on Elm Street

For three years, the vacant lot at 412 Elm Street in Decatur, Georgia, collected nothing but tire ruts and fast-food wrappers. The city council voted...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Phone Call That Changed Everything

In 2015, twenty-six-year-old Stefanie Davis was stocking shelves at a grocery store in rural Kentucky when her phone buzzed. A social worker was on the...

Luke 1:26-38Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Priest Who Tipped His Hat

When Desmond Tutu was nine years old, he was walking with his mother down a street in Johannesburg. Under apartheid, Black South Africans were routinely...

1 John 3:1-3Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Judge Who Asked to Listen

In 1961, when Learned Hand retired from the United States Court of Appeals after fifty-two years on the bench, a young clerk asked him what...

1 Kings 3:9Universal

Sermon Illustration

A Parent's Perfect Temperature

In neonatal intensive care units, doctors have long prescribed something remarkably low-tech for premature babies: kangaroo care — holding the infant skin-to-skin against a parent's...

James 1:17Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Sommelier and the Child at the Wedding

At a vineyard wedding in Napa Valley in 2019, master sommelier Carlton McCoy was explaining the wine to guests — describing notes of blackcurrant, cedar,...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Detail No One Would Invent

In 2018, forensic pathologist Dr. Richard Shepherd published his memoir *Unnatural Causes*, recounting forty years of examining the dead. He observed that the most reliable...

John 19:31-37Universal

Sermon Illustration

Toyohiko Kagawa and the Shinkawa Slums

In December 1909, a twenty-one-year-old Japanese seminary student named Toyohiko Kagawa walked into the Shinkawa slums of Kobe — a six-block stretch of open sewers,...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal