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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Firefighters of Station 12 Who Refused to Sleep

In 1991, a wildfire swept through the Oakland Hills of California, killing twenty-five people and destroying over three thousand homes in a single afternoon. Investigators...

Jude 1:3Universal

224 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Monday Prayers of Leipzig

On October 9, 1989, seventy thousand East German citizens filled the streets of Leipzig, carrying candles in the autumn darkness. The communist regime had stationed...

Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Food Pantry Wasn't Enough

Dorothy Chen had volunteered at Grace Community's food pantry every Tuesday for eleven years. She knew the regulars by name — knew that Miguel's daughter...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

Bonhoeffer's Watch Post

In April 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led into a concrete cell at Tegel Prison in Berlin, surrounded by the very injustice Habakkuk had lamented three...

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

Margaret Knott grew up in the Bass Harbor Head Light on the rocky coast of Maine, where her father kept the lamp burning from 1895...

Titus 2:11-12Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

William Wilberforce and the Long Campaign

For twenty years, William Wilberforce stood before the British Parliament and lost. Year after year, from 1787 onward, he introduced bills to abolish the slave...

James 5:7-10Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

Eric Liddell's Final Race

In 1924, Eric Liddell stunned the world by refusing to run his best event at the Paris Olympics because the heats fell on a Sunday....

Philippians 3:17-4:1Universal

256 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stone That Couldn't Stay Put

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Concrete buildings pancaked. Rubble buried entire neighborhoods. Rescue teams told families the math was brutal...

Matthew 28:1-10Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stump in Mrs. Nakamura's Yard

In 2011, the tsunami that devastated Fukushima, Japan, stripped the coastal town of Rikuzentakata down to mud and silence. Among the 70,000 pine trees that...

Isaiah 11:1-10Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bristlecone Pine of White Mountain

High in California's White Mountains, at nearly 12,000 feet, stands a bristlecone pine named Methuselah. It has endured for over 4,800 years in conditions that...

Habakkuk 3:17-19Universal

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cross in the Ruins

On the morning of November 15, 1940, Provost Richard Howard walked through the smoldering shell of Coventry Cathedral. German incendiary bombs had gutted the medieval...

Genesis 3:9-15, 20Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

I Love Brian Piccolo

In 1967, the Chicago Bears paired Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo as the NFL's first interracial roommates. One was Black, one was White, in an...

Universallove

263 words

Sermon Illustration

The Seawall at Fudai

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 earthquake shook the Pacific floor and sent a forty-foot tsunami racing toward Japan's northeastern coast. Entire towns vanished. Nearly...

Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

Eric Liddell and the Body That Felt God's Pleasure

In 1924, Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell stood at the center of an Olympic controversy in Paris. He had withdrawn from his best event, the 100...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge Builder Who Never Looked Back

In 2017, ultramarathon runner Courtney Dauwalter stood at the starting line of the Moab 240 — a 238-mile race through the Utah desert. By mile...

Luke 9:51-62Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Priest Who Became Salt on Molokai

In 1873, a thirty-three-year-old Belgian priest named Damien de Veuster stepped off a cargo ship onto the rocky shore of Kalaupapa, a remote peninsula on...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Slaver Who Sang of Freedom

John Newton had blood on his hands. For years he commanded slave ships, transporting human beings across the Atlantic in conditions of unspeakable horror. He...

Universalfreedom

240 words

Sermon Illustration

Augustine's Confession of Being Known

In 397 AD, a bishop in North Africa sat down to write something no one had ever attempted — a full autobiography addressed not to...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Field Where a Nation Knelt

On January 2, 2023, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin made a routine tackle during a Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Then he...

Universalhealing

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The News Too Wonderful to Believe

On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and read aloud General Orders No. 3. Two hundred and fifty thousand...

Matthew 28:1-10Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Diver's Message From the Dark

On July 2, 2018, twelve boys from the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach vanished into the Tham Luang cave system in northern Thailand....

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bucket With No Bottom

In 2014, a financial planner named David Chen sat across from a couple in Portland, Oregon, who earned a combined $190,000 a year. They had...

Haggai 1:5-6Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Pulled Up into the Light

On October 13, 2010, Florencio Avalos stepped into a narrow steel capsule called the Phoenix, 2,300 feet below the Atacama Desert. For sixty-nine days, he...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

Blaise Pascal and the Scrap of Paper Sewn Into His Coat

On the night of November 23, 1654, the brilliant French mathematician Blaise Pascal sat alone in his room in Paris. He was thirty-one years old,...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

250 words