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HomeIllustrations

9,139 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Volunteer Who Spoke for Child Number 4617

In the family courthouse of Jefferson County, Alabama, a retired schoolteacher named Dorothy Vance sits on a wooden bench every Tuesday morning. She is a...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

253 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Night Shift That Changed Everything

In 2018, a nurse named Rosa Delgado was working the overnight shift at a hospital in San Antonio when a colleague rushed in and said,...

Luke 2:15-21Universal

260 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 Weight He Chose to Carry

In 2018, a structural engineer named Carlos Mendez was inspecting a partially collapsed parking garage in Miami when he heard a child crying beneath the...

Luke 22:14-23:56Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Telegram That Saved the Condemned

On a bitter January morning in 1830, George Wilson sat in a Philadelphia jail cell awaiting execution for robbery and endangering a mail carrier's life....

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Put Down the Scalpel

In 2003, Dr. Elena Vasquez stood in an operating room at Johns Hopkins, her hands trembling over a seven-year-old boy whose tumor had wrapped itself...

2 Chronicles 20:12Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Crack in the Kiln

Maria Gonzalez had spent six weeks in her evening ceramics class in Asheville, North Carolina, shaping a tall vase for her daughter's wedding. She wedged...

Isaiah 64:1-9Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Ultrasound on the Refrigerator

In March of 2019, David and Maria Solis pinned a grainy ultrasound photo to their refrigerator in San Antonio. The image was blurry — a...

1 John 3:1-3Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name That Changed Everything

George Washington Carver never knew his parents. Born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864, he was stolen as an infant by Confederate raiders and...

1 John 3:1-3Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

Bonhoeffer and the Church That Split in Two

In May 1934, a young German pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer helped draft the Barmen Declaration, a document that drew a sharp line through the heart...

Luke 12:49-56Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Telescope That Stared Into Nothing

In 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made one of the boldest decisions in the history of science. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he...

Universaltrust

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Barber on 47th Street

For twenty-three years, James Macon has opened the doors of his shop on 47th Street in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood at seven in the morning. He...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Teenager Who Spoke Before Congress

In 2019, seventeen-year-old Greta Thunberg sat in a chair far too large for her small frame, facing a room full of seasoned politicians in the...

Jeremiah 1:4-10Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man Who Kept Two Mailboxes

In 1943, a Norwegian farmer named Halvor Knudsen maintained two mailboxes at the end of his lane outside Trondheim. One bore a small Norwegian flag...

1 Kings 18:21Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Carpenter's Hands on Moving Day

Margaret Chen had lived alone in her apartment on Birch Street for eleven years after her husband passed. When the building was condemned last October,...

John 13:34-35Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

Pandita Ramabai and the Temples That Breathe

In 1889, Pandita Ramabai opened the doors of Sharada Sadan in Pune, India, a refuge for child widows and girls rescued from temple prostitution. Ramabai,...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blackened Stones of Dresden

On the morning of February 14, 1945, the Frauenkirche in Dresden lay in ruins. Allied firebombing had collapsed the great baroque dome, reducing one of...

Jeremiah 33:14-16Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

Seven Steps Into Muddy Water

In 1982, a young chemist named Gertrude Elion stood in a Stockholm concert hall to receive the Nobel Prize for developing the first effective drug...

2 Kings 5:14Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Covenant of Restraint

In August of 1945, Branch Rickey sat across from Jackie Robinson in the Dodgers' front office and asked a question that would change baseball forever....

Universalpatience

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Forest That Rose from the Ash

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted with the force of five hundred atomic bombs. Two hundred thirty square miles of old-growth forest were...

Universalrestoration

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Young Man Who Could Only Say Yes

In 1887, at a D.L. Moody revival meeting, the music director Daniel Towner watched as person after person stood to share polished testimonies of faith....

Universalobedience

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Light That Never Stopped Traveling

In December 2021, NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit nearly a million miles from Earth. When its instruments finally opened, scientists wept...

Universalhope

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night Blaise Pascal Could Not Look Away

On the evening of November 23, 1654, the French mathematician Blaise Pascal sat alone in his room in Paris when something shattered his ordinary world....

Isaiah 6:1-8Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wednesday Night Nobody Expected

On a humid Wednesday evening in Beaumont, Texas, Margaret Tolliver — seventy-eight years old, arthritic hands folded in her lap — stood up during prayer...

Joel 2:28-29Universal

228 words