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Hosea Stories & Illustrations

21 illustrations — Vivid stories and real-world analogies for sermon use

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The Surgeon Who Operated for Free

In 1994, Dr. Erica Chen volunteered at a medical clinic in rural Guatemala. One afternoon, a young mother named Sofía carried in her three-year-old son,...

Hosea 14:4Universal

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Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Never Stopped Writing

During World War II, a British father named Ernest Gordon watched his teenage son walk away from everything the family stood for. The young man...

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Left the Light On

In 1891, a Swedish father named Lars Olsson watched his seventeen-year-old son, Erik, board a steamer in Gothenburg bound for America. Erik had rejected everything...

Hosea 11:1-11Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Kept the Porch Light On

In 1987, a man named Robert Fulghum told the story of a father in Athens, Greece, whose son had run away from home. The father,...

Hosea 11:1Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Kept the First Drawing

In 2014, a journalist interviewing retired schoolteacher Margaret Ellison in Savannah, Georgia, noticed something peculiar on her refrigerator. Pinned beneath a magnet was a crayon...

Hosea 11:1Universal

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom and the Father Who Would Not Let Go

In 1892, Casper ten Boom opened his watchmaker's shop each morning in Haarlem, Netherlands, and each evening he gathered his children around the table for...

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Never Stopped Leaving the Porch Light On

In 2019, a journalist in Nashville profiled a man named David Chen who had kept his front porch light on every single night for eleven...

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Kept the Light On

In 1646, Rembrandt van Rijn began what would become one of history's most celebrated paintings. But it was not until the final years of his...

Hosea 11:1-11Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Left the Porch Light On

For fourteen years, David Chen of Portland, Oregon, left his porch light on every single night. His daughter, Mei, had walked out at seventeen after...

Hosea 11:1-11Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Porch Light on Maple Street

For eleven months, David Chen left the porch light on at his home in Portland, Oregon. His daughter Mei had walked out after a terrible...

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom and the Sister Who Wandered

In the years before World War II, Corrie ten Boom's father Casper kept a watchmaker's shop in Haarlem, Netherlands. What few people remember is how...

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Orchard on Burned Ground

In 1988, a wildfire swept through the hills outside Yellowstone, charring over 790,000 acres. Rangers and tourists alike mourned what seemed like irreversible devastation. Blackened...

Hosea 14:4Universal

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Father and the Prodigal Nation

In the winter of 1944, Casper ten Boom was eighty-four years old when the Gestapo arrested him for hiding Jewish families in his Haarlem watchshop....

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Soup Kitchen That Closed for a Building Campaign

In 2014, a church in Decatur, Georgia, shuttered its Thursday night soup kitchen. The reason was practical — they needed the fellowship hall cleared for...

Hosea 6:6Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Flowers That Never Reached the Kitchen Table

In 1987, Margaret Ellison of Tupelo, Mississippi, kept a pristine house. Every Sunday she arranged fresh-cut hydrangeas on the foyer table, polished the silver until...

Hosea 6:6Universal

Sermon Illustration

John Newton and the Relentless Pursuit of Grace

In 1748, John Newton was a slave trader sailing the West African coast, a man so profane that even hardened sailors flinched at his blasphemy....

Hosea 1:2-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Orchard After the Drought

In 1988, a peach farmer named Harold Gentry in Chilton County, Alabama, watched his orchard wither through the worst drought in forty years. Every tree...

Hosea 14:4Universal

Sermon Illustration

Children of the Ash Heap

In the Roman Empire, unwanted newborns were carried to the city dump and left on mounds of ash and refuse. Romans called the practice "exposure"...

Hosea 1:2-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Foster Dad Who Kept the Porch Light On

In 2019, a foster father named Marcus Cole in Memphis, Tennessee, adopted three siblings — ages four, six, and nine — whose birth mother had...

Hosea 1:2-10Universal

Sermon Illustration

The Immaculate Kitchen

In 1987, a woman named Dorothy Pennington kept the most spotless kitchen in all of Decatur, Georgia. Her copper pots gleamed. Her tile grout was...

Hosea 6:6Universal

Sermon Illustration

Monica's Thirty-Year Vigil

In the fourth century, a North African mother named Monica watched her brilliant son Augustine abandon everything she had taught him. He took a concubine...

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal