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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

Written on the Inside

For twenty-two years, Marcus Chen played cello in the Houston Symphony — technically flawless, always reading from the score. Then one evening during a performance...

Psalm 40:7-11Universal

213 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Trellis and the Vine

In California's Napa Valley, vintners know that a grapevine left to itself will sprawl across the ground. The branches tangle. The fruit touches the soil,...

Titus 2:11-12Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Last Hymn of Maximilian Kolbe

In August 1941, a Polish Franciscan priest named Maximilian Kolbe stood in the selection line at Auschwitz. When a prisoner was chosen for the starvation...

Wisdom 3:1-9Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Scholar Who Gathered the Forgotten Girls

In 1889, Pandita Ramabai opened the doors of Sharada Sadan in Bombay — a shelter for child widows whom Indian society had discarded. These were...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The CEO Who Stood in the Unemployment Line

In 2009, during the worst of the Great Recession, Howard Schultz made a decision that baffled his executive team. The Starbucks CEO walked into a...

Matthew 3:13-17Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Seeds That Outlasted the Siege

During the 900-day Siege of Leningrad, twelve scientists at the Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources starved to death — surrounded by tons of edible...

1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stone That Didn't Look Like Much

Dr. Helen Pratt spent forty-one years at the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, California, examining stones. Over a hundred thousand passed through her hands....

Luke 2:22-40Universal

259 words

Sermon Illustration

Wilberforce and the Forty-Six Year Calling

In 1787, a twenty-seven-year-old member of Parliament named William Wilberforce sat at an oak desk in his London home and scribbled five words in his...

1 Corinthians 1:3-9Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cellar on Remembered Street

In September 1940, the German Luftwaffe dropped incendiary bombs across London for fifty-seven consecutive nights. Margaret Braithwaite, a schoolteacher on Albion Road in Lewisham, described...

Nahum 1:7Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Nurse Who Kept the Night Watch

In 2014, when Ebola swept through Liberia and the world recoiled in fear, a Liberian nurse named Salome Karwah did something remarkably simple. She held...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Unpacked Crates of San Simeon

William Randolph Hearst spent decades amassing one of the largest private art collections in history. From his castle perched above the California coastline, the newspaper...

Luke 12:13-21Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name on the Bracelet

When Maria Santos gave birth to her son at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the nurses handed her a tiny plastic bracelet. On...

Luke 2:15-21Universal

256 words

Sermon Illustration

Wings That Know the Way

Every autumn, millions of Monarch butterflies lift off from Canada and the northern United States and fly nearly 3,000 miles south to a specific cluster...

Universalfaith

258 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Hidden Treasure

During the Nazi occupation of Holland, Corrie ten Boom and her family hid Jewish refugees in a secret room behind a false wall in their...

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Morning the Bridge Appeared

On February 6, 2023, residents of Hatay Province in southern Turkey woke to devastation. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake had leveled entire neighborhoods overnight. Rescue worker Elif...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

Louis Zamperini and the Body Set Free

In 1943, Olympic miler Louis Zamperini crashed into the Pacific Ocean aboard a failing bomber. He survived forty-seven days on a life raft, then endured...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Archbishop Who Would Not Be Silent

On February 16, 1977, Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum walked into Ugandan President Idi Amin's conference hall in Kampala, knowing he might not walk out. For...

Isaiah 50:4-9aUniversal

217 words

Sermon Illustration

The Parlor Maid Who Crossed Mountains

In 1930, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid in London earning barely enough to survive. The China Inland Mission had rejected her — too old...

Ephesians 3:20Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stone That Decoded Everything

For centuries, European scholars stared at the temples and tombs of Egypt, captivated by the elegant hieroglyphics carved into every surface. They knew the symbols...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Translator They Burned at the Stake

In October 1536, William Tyndale was led to a stake outside Brussels, strangled, and burned. His crime was translating the Bible into English so that,...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge at Mostar

In November 1993, Croatian forces deliberately shelled the Stari Most, the ancient stone bridge in Mostar, Bosnia. Built in 1566 by Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin,...

Obadiah 1:15Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Golden Cross of Dresden

For nearly sixty years, the ruins of Dresden's Frauenkirche stood as a blackened heap in the center of the city — a wound left open...

Isaiah 60:1-6Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

The Open Source Life

In 1983, a programmer named Richard Stallman launched the GNU Project with a radical idea: software should be free — not free as in no...

Universalfreedom

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night Enfield Wept

On July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards stood before a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut, and read from a manuscript in his characteristically quiet, measured voice. He...

Acts 2:14a, 36-41Universal

251 words