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Home›Scriptures›1 Samuel

Illustrations from 1 Samuel

283 illustrations across all 31 chapters

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Sermon Illustration

The Sonar Operator on Her First Watch

In the summer of 2018, Petty Officer Third Class Maria Sandoval sat in the sonar room of the USS Bainbridge, two weeks into her first...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

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Browse 1 Samuel by Content Type

⛪LensLines™(162)📖Stories & Illustrations(101)👤Character Profiles(8)🏛️Historical Examples(7)🎬Movie Analogies(3)

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Sermon Illustration

The Apprentice Beekeeper Who Learned to Hear the Hive

In 2019, a teenager named Marco Peña joined his grandfather's beekeeping operation outside Tucson, Arizona. His first summer, he couldn't distinguish one hum from another...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Voice in the Milan Garden

In the summer of 386 AD, Augustine sat weeping beneath a fig tree in a Milan garden, torn between the life he had been living...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Operated Without Lights

In 2010, Dr. Evan Atar Adaha stood in a makeshift surgical tent in Kurmuk, a dusty border town in Sudan's Blue Nile region. Ethiopian militias...

1 Samuel 17:45Universal

Sermon Illustration

Florence Nightingale and the Voice She Could Not Yet Name

On February 7, 1837, a sixteen-year-old girl sitting in the garden of Embley Park in Hampshire, England, heard something she could only describe as "God...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Operated Without Power

In 2010, when a 7.0 earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dr. David Vanderpool arrived at a makeshift clinic with almost nothing. No electricity. No sterile operating...

1 Samuel 17:45Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Theologian Who Could Not Stay in New York

In June 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer arrived in New York City with every reason to stay. Friends had arranged a safe teaching position at Union Theological...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Cobbler God Sent to the Nations

In 1792, a young cobbler named William Carey stood before a gathering of Baptist ministers in Northampton, England, and proposed that Christians had an obligation...

1 Samuel 16:1-13Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Plant Doctor Who Needed Someone to Name the Voice

In Diamond, Missouri, around 1874, a frail orphan boy named George Washington Carver wandered the woods behind the Carver farm, whispering to sickly plants. Neighbors...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Smoke Jumper Who Learned to Read the Wind

In 2003, rookie wildland firefighter Jason Ramos reported to his first season with the Arrowhead Interagency Hotshot Crew in the San Bernardino Mountains. His superintendent,...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Marine Biologist Who Learned to Listen Below the Surface

In 1992, a young researcher named Michelle Fournet arrived in southeastern Alaska to study humpback whales. For weeks, she dropped hydrophones into the icy waters...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Frequency Only Stillness Can Find

In 1995, acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton traveled to Olympic National Park in Washington State to document something increasingly rare: one square inch of pure silence....

1 Samuel 3:10Universal

Sermon Illustration

William Wilberforce and the Voice He Mistook for Ambition

In the autumn of 1785, twenty-six-year-old William Wilberforce sat across from John Newton in a small parlor on Charles Square in London. Wilberforce had been...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Radio Dial Between Stations

In 2019, a retired teacher named Margaret Chen sat in her kitchen in Portland, Oregon, fiddling with her late husband's old shortwave radio. She twisted...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Night Shift Dispatcher Who Learned to Hear

Maria Chen was three weeks into her training at the Sacramento 911 dispatch center when she nearly missed the call that mattered most. A woman...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

Florence Nightingale and the Voice She Heard at Embley Park

On February 7, 1837, sixteen-year-old Florence Nightingale sat in the garden of her family's estate at Embley Park in Hampshire, England. In her diary that...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Apprentice Who Learned to Hear the Beats

In 1987, a sixteen-year-old named Marcus Chen began apprenticing under piano tuner Walter Kraus in Portland, Oregon. Walter would strike two notes simultaneously and ask,...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Garden in Milan Where a Restless Man Finally Listened

In the summer of 386 AD, a thirty-one-year-old rhetoric professor sat weeping beneath a fig tree in a Milan garden. Augustine of Hippo had spent...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Call Hidden in the Canopy

In the summer of 2019, graduate student Maria Chen spent three weeks in Costa Rica's Monteverde Cloud Forest, recording hours of ambient sound for her...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Birdsong That Was Always There

In 2019, a retired schoolteacher named Margaret Chen joined a birding group in Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. On her first morning walk, she heard...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Alarm on the Night Shift

Dr. Maria Santos still remembers her first overnight shift at Johns Hopkins in July 2019 — hallways humming with fluorescent light, monitors beeping from every...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Medical Student and the Heart Murmur She Couldn't Hear

Dr. Maria Chen still remembers her first week of clinical rotations at Johns Hopkins in 2019. Her attending physician, Dr. Hadley, placed a stethoscope against...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

Eric Liddell and the Call He Almost Mistook for Guilt

In 1924, Eric Liddell was the most famous athlete in Scotland. After his Olympic gold medal in Paris, universities and speaking platforms competed for his...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Shoe Clerk Who Needed a Nudge

On a spring afternoon in 1855, eighteen-year-old Dwight Moody stood behind the counter of Holton's shoe store on Court Street in Boston, wrapping boots in...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal