Illustrations from Mark

The River and the Ridge

In 2018, ultramarathon runner Courtney Dauwalter won the Moab 240 — a 238-mile race across the Utah desert. But what struck people wasn't the finish...

⛪LensLines™(216)📖Stories & Illustrations(92)🏛️Historical Examples(78)🎬Movie Analogies(14)🧘Spiritual Disciplines(9)

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Sermon Illustration

The Silence Before the Shout

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and read General Order No. 3: all enslaved people were free. The war...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

Pulled Up into the Light

On October 13, 2010, Florencio Avalos stepped into a narrow steel capsule called the Phoenix, 2,300 feet below the Atacama Desert. For sixty-nine days, he...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

Twenty-Five Cents and a New Name

On the morning of June 1, 1843, a woman named Isabella Baumfree packed a pillowcase with a few belongings, tucked twenty-five cents into her pocket,...

The Soldier Who Wouldn't Believe the War Was Over

In March 1974, Japanese intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda finally emerged from the Philippine jungle on Lubang Island, where he had been hiding for twenty-nine years....

The Table She Set Every Thursday

For seventeen years, Maria Gonzalez set an extra place at her Thursday dinner table in her small apartment in San Antonio. Every week, without fail,...

Mark 8:36Universalambitionsacrifice

Movie Analogy

Whiplash: What Will You Sacrifice for Greatness? (Mark 8:36)

In the film *Whiplash*, we journey into the gritty world of jazz through the eyes of a young drummer named Andrew Neiman. Picture Andrew, a bespectacled dreamer, practicing in a cramped apartment, the echoes of his sticks hitting the snare...

Devotional

Spiritual Insight: Nonviolent Resistance

Dear God of Love and Justice, In Mark's Gospel, Jesus gathers His disciples close and overturns every assumption they hold about power. "Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant," He tells them — and then He...

Mark 10:42-45Reformed

Thirty-Six Hours in the Deep End

Dr. Amara Osei still had confetti in her hair from the Emory University School of Medicine graduation ceremony when her phone buzzed at 4:47 a.m....

Devotional

Contemplating We are Imago Dei

Dear God of Love and Justice, Martin Luther once said that a Christian is perfectly free, lord of all, subject to none — and at the same time, a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant, subject to all. That paradox...

Mark 10:42-45Lutheran

The Prisoners Who Hid from Freedom

On January 27, 1945, Soviet soldiers pushed through the gates of Auschwitz. They expected to find the dead. Instead, they found seven thousand survivors —...

The Rescue Team That Brought a Body Bag

In January 2024, a search-and-rescue crew in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado set out to recover the body of 34-year-old hiker Daniel Ostrander. He...

The Table That Held Everything

In 2019, a family in Birmingham, Alabama, nearly threw out their grandmother's oak kitchen table. It was scratched, stained with decades of Thanksgiving gravy, and...

The Checkpoint No One Dared to Cross

On the night of November 9, 1989, East German border guards received confused orders: the crossings were open. Thousands gathered at the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint...

Bread on the Hillside

In the summer of 1680, Scottish Covenanters gathered on a remote hillside near Irongray in Dumfriesshire, knowing that government dragoons were hunting them. They had...

Bonhoeffer's Final Communion at Flossenburg

On April 8, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood in a makeshift room at the Schonberg school, where prisoners were being held in transit. He knew what...

The Men Who Watched for Shackleton

In April 1916, Ernest Shackleton left twenty-two men stranded on Elephant Island, a barren spit of rock off the Antarctic coast. He promised he would...

Mark 13:24-37Universal

The Call Before the Work

On February 7, 1837, a sixteen-year-old English girl named Florence Nightingale sat in the garden at Embley Park and heard what she described as the...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

The Prison and the Promise in Burma

In 1813, Adoniram Judson knelt on the deck of a ship bound for Burma, freshly ordained and burning with purpose. He had heard the voice...

The Lanterns in the Old North Church

On the night of April 18, 1775, a Boston sexton named Robert Newman climbed the narrow stairs of Christ Church — known today as Old...

Mark 13:24-37Universal

The Parchment Sewn Into Pascal's Coat

On the night of November 23, 1654, Blaise Pascal — mathematician, physicist, one of the sharpest minds in France — sat alone in his room....

Mark 9:2-10Universal

Matthew 19:6Universalmarriagedivorce

When the Sky Reveals What Was Always There

On April 8, 2024, millions of Americans drove hundreds of miles to stand in the path of totality. In Fredericksburg, Texas, a retired science teacher...

Mark 9:2-10Universal

Movie Analogy

Marriage Story: What God Has Joined (Matthew 19:6)

In the poignant film *Marriage Story*, we witness the unraveling of a love that was once vibrant and full of promise. The movie opens with Charlie and Nicole sitting across from each other, surrounded by mementos of their past—a well-loved...

What the Judge Declared

Every November, courtrooms across America host National Adoption Day. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, families line up in their Sunday best while children clutch stuffed animals...