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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Library That Stayed Open

In August 2014, when tear gas drifted through the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and the world watched a community fracture on live television, the Ferguson...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

245 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Library That Never Ends

In 2019, a team of astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at what appeared to be an empty patch of sky — a dark sliver...

Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Motorcade Approaches

In November 2023, residents along a motorcade route in San Francisco watched something remarkable unfold. Hours before the APEC summit, city crews swept streets that...

Psalm 24:7-10Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The GPS That Required Trust

In 2019, journalist Sarah Marquis spent three months hiking alone across remote stretches of Tasmania's wilderness. She carried a GPS device but quickly discovered something...

Psalm 25:1-10Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lyrics She Lived Before They Were Written

In 2002, a drunk driver named Eric Smallridge crossed the center line and killed two young women — one of them Meagan Napier, just twenty...

Universalforgiveness

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Door Finally Opened

For three deployments over seven years, Staff Sergeant Maria Reyes communicated with her daughter Sofia through every means available. First came handwritten letters from Kandahar,...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cotton Field and the Open Door

Mary McLeod was ten years old, picking cotton alongside her parents in Mayesville, South Carolina, in 1885. She could not read a single word. But...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Refugee Whose File Was Already Open

In 2019, a Syrian family arrived at a resettlement office in Louisville, Kentucky, exhausted from eighteen months of waiting. The father, Marwan Haddad, carried a...

John 1:43-51Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Following the Thread

In George MacDonald's 1872 fantasy *The Princess and the Goblin*, young Princess Irene receives an extraordinary gift from her mysterious great-great-grandmother: a thin, silken thread...

Universalobedience

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Shepherd on the Beartooth Pass

In the summer of 1987, twelve-year-old Marcus Elling wandered off the trail during a family hike along Montana's Beartooth Pass. The afternoon clouds rolled in...

Psalm 121Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Couple Who Sold Everything for a Country They'd Never Seen

In 2019, David and Maria Fernandez were running a successful catering business in San Antonio, Texas. They had a paid-off house, a loyal clientele, and...

Genesis 12:1-4aUniversal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

Three Words That Changed Everything

In 1987, a cardiac surgeon in Portland named Dr. Raymond Kelley made an error during a routine bypass that left a forty-year-old mother partially paralyzed....

2 Samuel 12:13Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Washing Machines at Grace Point on Tuesday Nights

Every Sunday morning, the congregation at Grace Point Church in Long Beach, California, sang worship songs with hands raised and voices strong. But pastor Chris...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge That Held for a Hundred Years

In 1883, when the Brooklyn Bridge finally opened after fourteen years of construction, skeptics filled the newspapers with predictions of collapse. Engineer John Roebling had...

Psalm 89:2-5, 27, 29Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Emergency Room That Runs on Everyone

On a Friday night in March 2023, a five-car pileup on I-75 outside Atlanta sent eleven patients flooding into Grady Memorial Hospital's trauma bay within...

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Was Also Her Father

Seven-year-old Elena Vasquez was wheeled into Portland General's trauma unit on a Tuesday evening, her right arm broken in two places after falling from the...

Hebrews 4:16Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Kidney Recipient's Promise

In 2019, a thirty-two-year-old man named Derek Mitchell from Memphis received a kidney from a twenty-four-year-old woman who had died in a car accident. Before...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

Fortified by the Fracture

In 1892, German anatomist Julius Wolff documented something remarkable about human bone: it doesn't just endure stress — it grows stronger because of it. When...

Universalperseverance

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Roots That Never Stop Reaching

In the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, the mesquite tree appears unremarkable — a twisted trunk, sparse leaves, standing in soil so dry it cracks like...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

222 words

Sermon Illustration

The Compass That Points Two Directions

In 1943, a Norwegian fisherman named Arne Kvalvik discovered that his boat compass had been sabotaged by the German occupation forces. They had placed a...

1 Kings 18:21Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Refugee Doctor Nobody Expected to Find in Rural Kentucky

When Dr. Amara Osei arrived in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 2019, the whispers started immediately. A physician from Ghana, practicing in a coal town of...

John 1:43-51Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Path Her Feet Already Knew

In 1987, Margaret Ellison lost her sight to macular degeneration at sixty-three. Her husband Harold worried she would never walk their half-mile gravel lane to...

2 John 1:6Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

A Miner's Thirst That Flooded a Nation

In the autumn of 1904, twenty-six-year-old Evan Roberts trudged out of the Welsh coal mines each evening with lungs full of dust and a soul...

John 7:37-39Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Last Shortwave Signal From Bucharest

On Christmas Day, 1989, Romanian radio crackled to life with words no one had dared speak in forty-four years: "The dictator has fallen. You are...

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal

238 words