146 illustrations referencing 1 John
In Hacksaw Ridge, Desmond Doss refuses to carry a weapon but volunteers as a combat medic. On Okinawa, he single-handedly rescues 75 wounded soldiers, lowering them down a cliff under enemy fire. Grea
Evelyn Wang can access infinite versions of herself across the multiverse—every choice she didn't make, every life she could have lived. At first it's overwhelming chaos. But she discovers the secret:
In A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, cynical journalist Lloyd Vogel is assigned to profile Mr. Rogers—and expects to expose him as fake. Instead, Rogers' relentless kindness exposes Lloyd's own wou
WALL-E is the last robot on Earth, compacting trash after humanity fled. He's developed something unexpected: a personality, curiosity, loneliness. He collects treasures from the garbage. He watches o
In Atonement, Briony Tallis tells a lie as a child that destroys two lives. She spends the rest of her life trying to atone—becoming a nurse, writing novels, seeking forgiveness. She cannot undo what
In Room, five-year-old Jack has spent his entire life in captivity—a small shed his mother calls "Room." When they escape into the real world, the world terrifies him. Everything is too big, too brigh
Dear God of relentless, boundary-crossing Love, Tonight I bring before You the face I would rather forget — the colleague who undermined me in that meeting, the family member whose words still sting weeks later, the neighbor whose yard sign...
Dear God of Love and Justice, We confess that our political imaginations have grown small. We have sorted your children into categories — allies and enemies, useful and expendable, worthy and unworthy — and we have called this wisdom. But...
When Marcus and Dena Thompson of Nashville finalized the adoption of seven-year-old Jaylen in 2019, the judge asked Jaylen if he understood what was happening....
In 2019, a fourteen-year-old girl named Daysha arrived at a foster home in Memphis, Tennessee, carrying everything she owned in a black garbage bag. She...
Dear God of relentless love, We confess that our first instinct is rarely peace. When someone cuts us off in traffic, when a colleague takes credit for our work, when injustice stares us in the face — our fists clench...
In 2012, a couple from Portland, Oregon, traveled to Guangzhou, China, to finalize the adoption of a three-year-old girl named Mei. She had spent her...
In 1930, the China Inland Mission told Gladys Aylward she wasn't qualified. Too old at twenty-eight. Too uneducated. Too ordinary. She was a parlor maid...
Dear God of relentless love, We love because You first loved us — and what a dangerous, world-altering love it is. When John Wesley rode into the coal-mining villages of Bristol, mobs pelted him with stones and rotten eggs. He...
In 1850, a young African girl named Sarah Forbes Bonetta arrived on English shores. Born an Egbado princess, she had been orphaned when her parents...
When Desmond Tutu was nine years old, he was walking with his mother down a street in Johannesburg. Under apartheid, Black South Africans were routinely...
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...
In March of 2019, David and Maria Solis pinned a grainy ultrasound photo to their refrigerator in San Antonio. The image was blurry — a...
In Frozen, Elsa lives in terror of her own power. She isolates herself, hides her gift, nearly destroys her kingdom with fear-driven ice. Only Anna's sacrificial love—dying to save her sister—breaks t
We read this passage as a powerful affirmation of God's love manifest in our liberation and communal love. In 1 John 4:17-21, the perfection of love in us is evidence of God's justice prevailing in our lives. This love casts out fear, including the fear of oppression and dehumanization, and becomes
In the Roman Catholic Lens tradition, we read 1 John 4:17-21 as a profound affirmation of God's love manifest in Christ and the call to live this love among one another. This passage emphasizes the incarnational reality of love perfected in us, foreshadowing our union with God in the Beatific Vision
We read 1 John 2:28-3:3 through the lens of God's covenant faithfulness, seeing the text as an assurance of our adoption as children of God through the covenant of grace. This passage emphasizes our identity in Christ, in whom we are called to abide, as a reflection of our effectual calling and pers
We read 1 John 4:17-21 through the lens of Law and Gospel, emphasizing God's perfect love revealed in Christ as the Gospel promise that casts out fear. The passage underscores our inability to love perfectly (Law) and the assurance of our standing before God through Christ's love (Gospel). The text
We read 1 John 4:17-21 as a profound exposition of the assurance believers possess in the covenant of grace. The passage affirms that our love is perfected in God’s sovereign love, which is manifested through Christ’s atoning work on our behalf. Here, love is not a human achievement but a fruit of G