1 Corinthians Stories &amp; Illustrations

The Small Woman Who Carried No Credentials

In 1930, the China Inland Mission rejected Gladys Aylward. She was a parlor maid from Edmonton, north London — no university degree, no seminary training,...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

The Cure Made from the Venom

At the Australian Reptile Park north of Sydney, handlers milk eastern brown snakes — the second most venomous land snake on earth — by pressing...

The Conservator's Hands

In 2019, conservator Eliane Dotson spent fourteen months restoring Artemisia Gentileschi's seventeenth-century painting at the National Gallery in London. Every morning she arrived before dawn,...

The Heart That Beat Twice

In 2018, a nineteen-year-old college student named Jordan Rice received a new heart after three years on the transplant waiting list at Emory University Hospital...

1 Corinthians 1:3-9Universal

The Bridge Builder Who Never Abandons a Project

In 2011, engineer Linda Figg stood before skeptics in St. Petersburg, Florida, as construction began on the new Sunshine Skyway Bridge approach. Midway through the...

1 Corinthians 15:20-27Universal

The First Cell of a New Creation

When a patient receives a bone marrow transplant, the old marrow — diseased, failing, producing only death — is destroyed. New donor marrow is infused,...

1 Corinthians 12:12-31aUniversal

The Surgery That Needed Every Hand

In 2017, a team at Johns Hopkins Hospital performed a groundbreaking face transplant on Katie Stubblefield, a young woman from Mississippi. The operation lasted thirty-one...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

The Bee That Already Stung

On a warm afternoon in late August, a beekeeper named Margaret was checking her hives when a honeybee landed on her bare forearm. She didn't...

The ER Nurse Who Knew Before the Monitors Did

Veteran nurses at Johns Hopkins call it "the feeling." Maria Gonzalez, a thirty-year ICU nurse in Baltimore, could walk past a patient's room and stop...

George Washington Carver's 4 A.M. Appointment

Every morning at four o'clock, long before the Alabama sun touched the fields of Tuskegee Institute, George Washington Carver rose and walked into the woods....

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

From Caterpillar Soup to Cathedral Wings

In 2019, biologist Andrei Sourakov at the Florida Museum of Natural History placed a monarch caterpillar inside a CT scanner to watch what happens during...

The Sommelier Who Could Not Read

In 2012, a documentary called *Somm* followed four candidates preparing for the Master Sommelier exam — one of the hardest tests in the world, with...

1 Corinthians 12:1-11Universal

The Refugees of Herrnhut

In 1722, a ragged band of Moravian refugees stumbled onto the estate of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf in Saxony. They had nothing but the clothes...

Olaudah Equiano and the Price Already Paid

In 1766, a young African man named Olaudah Equiano stood on a dock in Montserrat, West Indies, clutching forty pounds sterling — every coin he...

1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17Universal

The Foundation Stone of St. Paul's

When Christopher Wren began rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London in 1666, he faced a decision that would determine the fate...

1 Corinthians 12:1-11Universal

The Clapham Circle and the End of the Slave Trade

In the late 1700s, a small group of committed Christians gathered regularly in a village just south of London called Clapham. They became known as...

The Tinker Who Wrote What Oxford Could Not

John Bunyan mended pots and pans in the villages around Bedford, England. He had no university degree, no library of classical texts, no patron among...

The Piano Tuner Who Heard What No One Else Could

Martin Backhaus spent forty-three years tuning pianos in Hamburg, Germany. He never performed on stage, never recorded an album, never earned a degree from the...

The Blind Piano Tuner of Nashville

For thirty-two years, Gerald Morrow tuned pianos along Music Row in Nashville without ever reading a note of sheet music. Born blind, he never attended...