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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Notes You Don't Deserve

In music, there is a technique called the grace note. It is a small, ornamental note printed tiny in the score, with no official rhythmic...

Universalgrace

233 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Ceiling He Almost Quit

In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo protested. He considered himself a sculptor, not a painter....

Universalperseverance

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Broadcast From Aleppo

In December 2016, as Syrian government forces closed in on eastern Aleppo, a young journalist named Lina Shamy recorded a final video message. With dust...

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

The News No One Could Carry

On April 15, 1945, British soldiers rolled open the gates of Bergen-Belsen. Sixty thousand prisoners stood on the other side. The soldiers expected cheering, embraces,...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letter from Tegel Prison

In the spring of 1943, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Tegel military prison in Berlin. He had spent...

Psalm 25:1-10Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Words That Wrote a Hymn

In 1886, Daniel B. Towner was leading music at a Dwight L. Moody revival meeting when a young man stood to share his testimony. He...

Universalobedience

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mountain Lion on the Pacific Crest Trail

In 2019, hiker Kyle Burgess was jogging a stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail near Slate Canyon, Utah, when a cougar began stalking him. For...

James 4:7Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Figure Already Free

Michelangelo once described his approach to sculpture not as adding something to marble, but as removing everything that wasn't the figure. He looked at a...

Universalfreedom

238 words

Sermon Illustration

No One Wins Alone

In February 1980, coach Herb Brooks led a group of college hockey players onto the ice at Lake Placid to face the Soviet Union, a...

Universalcommunity

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wound That Wouldn't Close

In 2005, researchers at Ohio State University published a remarkable finding. Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her team gave small, standardized wounds to married couples, then...

Universalforgiveness

223 words

Sermon Illustration

Rewired for Freedom

In 1949, Canadian neuropsychologist Donald Hebb proposed a principle that would revolutionize our understanding of the brain: neurons that fire together wire together. For decades,...

Universalfreedom

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Confession That Cost Everything

In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, there is a moment that stops readers cold. Jean Valjean has rebuilt his life. He is a respected mayor, a...

Universalcourage

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Reluctant Painter of the Sistine Chapel

In 1508, Michelangelo Buonarroti received a commission he did not want. Pope Julius II ordered him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo...

Universalobedience

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Garden He Painted in the Dark

In the final decade of his life, Claude Monet was going blind. Cataracts clouded his vision so severely that the painter who had spent fifty...

Universalhope

259 words

Sermon Illustration

The Iconographer's Holy Constraint

In the Orthodox tradition of icon painting, the artist does not begin with a blank canvas and a free imagination. The iconographer begins with prayer,...

Universalobedience

256 words

Sermon Illustration

Love That Followed Him to Siberia

In Dostoevsky's *Crime and Punishment*, Raskolnikov is a young intellectual who commits murder, convinced his superior mind places him above moral law. He spends most...

Universalgrace

218 words

Sermon Illustration

Ten Days of Staring at Nothing

In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision that baffled his colleagues. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he pointed the Hubble...

Universalpatience

244 words

Sermon Illustration

Trusting the Dark Patch of Sky

In 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision that many of his colleagues thought was foolish. He pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny...

Universalfaith

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name the Bishop Gave Him

In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean has spent nineteen years in prison. When he is finally released, he carries a yellow passport that marks...

Universalidentity

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hands That Heal Us

In 2006, neuroscientist Dr. James Coan at the University of Virginia conducted a remarkable experiment. He placed married women inside an fMRI brain scanner and...

Universalcommunity

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Returning Green

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted with the force of five hundred atomic bombs, flattening 230 square miles of old-growth forest in minutes....

Universalrestoration

234 words

Sermon Illustration

More Dangerous Than Smoking

In 2010, Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a researcher at Brigham Young University, published a sweeping meta-analysis that stunned the medical world. After examining 148 studies and...

Universalcommunity

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night John Paton's House Was Surrounded

In 1862, missionary John Paton huddled with his wife inside their small mission house on the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides. Outside, hostile...

Psalm 34:2-9Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song That Named Her

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a doctor's error left her permanently blind. The world would have written her story in a single word:...

Universalidentity

242 words