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Home›Browse by Type›Stories & Illustrations

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Stories & Illustrations

7,545 illustrations — Vivid stories and real-world analogies for sermon use

Browse Stories & Illustrations by Book

Psalm (82)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)Deuteronomy (8)2 Corinthians (8)Proverbs (8)

Sermon Illustration

The Architect Who Walked His Own Blueprint

In 1882, Antoni Gaudí took over construction of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. What makes the basilica astonishing is not just its beauty but its...

Colossians 1:15-17Universal

229 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Stammering Sunday School Teacher Who Changed the World

In April of 1855, a Boston Sunday school teacher named Edward Kimball paced the sidewalk outside a shoe store on Court Street, nearly losing his...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Universe Beneath Our Feet

In a single teaspoon of healthy soil, there are more microorganisms than there are people on the entire planet — roughly eight billion bacteria, fungi,...

Universalhumility

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Christ-Follower in the Break Room

Marcus had worked at the distribution warehouse in Memphis for eleven years. He was known for his quiet reliability — first one clocked in, last...

Romans 1:16Universal

262 words

Sermon Illustration

The Field Preacher Who Found the Forgotten Flock

In 1739, the Anglican clergy of Bristol, England, had largely abandoned the coal miners of Kingswood. These workers — their faces blackened with soot, their...

Jeremiah 23:1-6Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

Planting Tomatoes in a Place You Didn't Choose

When Toyota closed its assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, in 2020 for pandemic retooling, hundreds of temporary workers found themselves relocated to a facility in...

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7Universal

239 words

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

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Woman Who Finished What She Started

In Harper Lee's *To Kill a Mockingbird*, young Jem Finch believes his father Atticus is the bravest man in Maycomb County after watching him drop...

Universalcourage

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Tracker Who Read the Forest Floor

In the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, a search-and-rescue volunteer named Dale Hutchins can identify a lost hiker by nothing more than their footprints....

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

251 words

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

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Invisible Thread

In George MacDonald's beloved children's novel *The Princess and the Goblin*, young Princess Irene receives a remarkable gift from her mysterious great-great-grandmother: a thin, silken...

Universalfaith

265 words

Sermon Illustration

The Search Party on Ridgeline Trail

In March 2019, a three-year-old boy named Casey Hathaway wandered away from his grandmother's backyard in Craven County, North Carolina, and disappeared into dense woodland....

Luke 15:3-7Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

Sojourner Truth and the Body That Belonged to God

In 1826, Isabella Baumfree walked away from the Dumont estate in Ulster County, New York, carrying her infant daughter and nothing else. She had been...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Woodworker Who Kept the Light On

Marcus Washington had been building furniture in his garage workshop in Durham, North Carolina, for seven years — nights and weekends, after his shift at...

John 1:43-51Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Doctor Who Listened for the First Breath

In 1952, Dr. Virginia Apgar sat in the delivery room at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York and did something no physician had systematically done before....

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Question Before the Consequence

When Marcus Chen was sixteen, he took his father's car without permission and sideswiped a mailbox three blocks from home. He parked in the garage,...

Genesis 3:9-15, 20Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

The Boy Who Knew Where He Belonged

In 2019, eleven-year-old Gitanjali Rao was named TIME Magazine's first-ever Kid of the Year. Her parents, Bharathi and Ram, had driven her to a science...

Luke 2:41-51aUniversal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Telescope at Griffith Observatory

On a Friday evening in Los Angeles, a line of visitors snakes up the steps of Griffith Observatory to peer through the Zeiss telescope. A...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mechanic Who Could Listen to Engines

In 1987, a Toyota dealership in Lexington, Kentucky hired a mechanic named Earl Combs who had no formal training. He had never attended a single...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

259 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Wept at What He Saw

In 1816, French physician Rene Laennec placed a rolled-up notebook against a patient's chest and heard, for the first time, the unmistakable rhythm of a...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hymn Writer Who Trusted from the Cradle

When Fanny Crosby was just six weeks old, a doctor's mistake left her permanently blind. By the time she was a year old, her father...

Psalm 71:1-6Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Echo That Wouldn't Go Away

In 1964, two radio astronomers at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey — Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson — pointed a massive horn-shaped antenna toward...

Genesis 1:1-3Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Casserole That Never Left the Counter

Margaret Holloway made the best chicken casserole in all of Decatur, Georgia. Everyone at First Community Church said so. When the Nguyen family lost their...

James 2:17Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

A Star Above the Ash

In *The Return of the King*, the final volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Lord of the Rings*, Samwise Gamgee lies exhausted in Mordor. The land...

Universalfaith

244 words