True, sourced stories for sermons and lessons. Search by keyword, theme, or Bible book.
48 illustrations found
Lipscomb Stayed Through the Cholera
In the summer of 1873, cholera swept through Nashville. Close to 1,000 people died, roughly one in every 25 residents.
Lottie Moon Gave All She Had
Lottie Moon served as a missionary in China for nearly 40 years. Her letters home kept begging for more workers and more support, and in 1888 Southern Baptist women started a Christmas offering for foreign missions.
Marie Curie Kept Working
Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw in 1867, the daughter of a schoolteacher. She married Pierre Curie, and together they took up the study of radioactivity.
Marshall Keeble Kept Preaching
Marshall Keeble was a Black preacher among the churches of Christ who spent 55 years as a full-time evangelist, much of it in the segregated South.
Moody’s Candy and Pony Rides
Dwight L. Moody came to Chicago selling shoes, dreaming of making a fortune of $100,000. But after he came to faith, it slowly dawned on him that his life should be spent helping people instead of piling up wealth.
Mother Teresa Leaves the Convent
For years Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta. But she couldn't stop thinking about the suffering and poverty she saw outside the convent walls.
Pandita Ramabai Translated for Forgotten Women
Ramabai was born in India in 1858. Girls had no schools, but her parents taught her Sanskrit.
Rick Rescorla Went Back Up
Rick Rescorla fought in Vietnam as a young Army lieutenant. Years later he was head of security for Morgan Stanley in the World Trade Center.
Ryan Did Chores for a Well
In January 1998, six-year-old Ryan Hreljac heard his grade one teacher, Mrs. Prest, explain that people were getting sick and even dying because they had no clean water.
Saman Kunan’s Last Dive
In the summer of 2018, twelve boys and their soccer coach were trapped deep in a flooded cave in northern Thailand. Saman Kunan had already left the Thai navy, but he came back to volunteer in the rescue.
The Carpathia Raced Toward the Ice
At 12:35 am on April 15, 1912, the wireless operator and first officer of the Carpathia woke Captain Arthur Rostron with news that the Titanic had struck ice and was sinking.
The Farm Boy Who Fed Millions
Norman Borlaug grew up on a farm near Cresco, Iowa. In 1944 he took a job in Mexico directing a wheat research program, and he spent years in the fields crossing and testing wheat varieties.
The Gophers of Mount St. Helens
When Mount St. Helens blew in 1980, it flattened about 135 square miles of forest and buried the ground under ash thick enough to bury a car.
The Hole in Clara Barton’s Sleeve
At the Battle of Antietam in 1862, Clara Barton arrived near the Cornfield to find surgeons dressing wounds with corn husks because army supplies were far behind.
The Lady with the Lamp
In 1854, Florence Nightingale answered a government call for nurses and headed to Scutari, near Constantinople, to care for British soldiers from the Crimean War.
The Little Ships of Dunkirk
In late May 1940, more than 300,000 British and French soldiers were trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk with the German army closing in. The beaches sloped so gently that big warships couldn't get close, so the British Admiralty appealed to the owners of small boats for help.
The Man in the Red Bandanna
Welles Crowther was a young equities trader and former Boston College lacrosse player. On September 11, 2001, survivors in the South Tower's burning 78th floor sky lobby saw a young man appear with a red bandanna over his face.
The Man Who Planted a Forest
In 1979 a teenager named Jadav Payeng started planting trees on barren land on Majuli, an island in the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India. He just kept planting, year after year, one seedling at a time.
The Navajo Code Was Never Broken
In World War II, the Marines needed a code the enemy could not break. They decided to try one based on the Navajo language, which was unwritten and spoken by very few people outside the Navajo Nation.
The Sailor Who Turned Around
On September 24, 1988, Canadian sailor Lawrence Lemieux was racing in the Finn class at the Seoul Olympics and was on course to finish second in that day's race.