True, sourced stories for sermons and lessons. Search by keyword, theme, or Bible book.
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Jimmy V: Don’t Ever Give Up
In 1993, college basketball coach Jim Valvano, who had led North Carolina State to the 1983 national championship, was dying of cancer. At the first ESPYS awards, he received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.
John Deere Made a Plow from a Broken Saw Blade
When pioneer farmers reached the Illinois prairie, their cast-iron plows couldn't handle that thick, sticky black soil. It kept clinging to the plow instead of turning over.
Lasse Viren Got Back Up
At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Finland's Lasse Viren was one of the favorites in the 10,000 meters. Then on the 12th lap, he got tangled up with Tunisia's Mohamad Gammoudi and both men went down on the track.
Livingstone Died on His Knees
David Livingstone spent his childhood working 14 hours a day in a cotton mill. He trained to be a medical missionary to China, but the Opium War shut that door.
Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth
Two weeks after an ALS diagnosis forced him out of baseball, Lou Gehrig stood at home plate in Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, in front of 61,808 fans.
Malala Kept Going to School
When Malala Yousafzai was eleven, she started writing an anonymous blog for the BBC's Urdu site. Under the heading "I am afraid," she wrote about her nightmares of being too scared to go to school because of the Taliban in her Swat Valley.
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.
Mary Anning Dug Out a Monster
Mary Anning grew up poor in Lyme Regis on the English coast. Her father, a cabinetmaker, taught her to hunt and clean fossils on the beach, and when he died in 1810 the family sold her finds to pay debts.
Now Thank We All Our God Came Out of a Plague Year
Martin Rinckart was a pastor and musician in the German city of Eilenburg during the Thirty Years' War, which ran from 1618 to 1648. War, famine, and plague filled the town with refugees.
Opportunity Kept Rolling
NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars on January 24, 2004. It was planned for a 90-day mission.
Pando, the Trembling Giant
In central Utah, on the Fishlake National Forest, there's a grove of quaking aspen that looks like a whole forest. It's actually one living thing.
Pine Cones That Need Fire
In the summer of 1988, wildfires burned across huge stretches of Yellowstone. Many people grieved, convinced the park they loved was ruined.
Rocky Bleier Decided He Would Walk
Rocky Bleier finished his rookie season with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1968, then was drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam. After only three months his platoon was ambushed in a rice paddy.
Roger Bannister Breaks the Four-Minute Mile
For years people said running a mile in under four minutes was beyond what the human body could do. Roger Bannister was a 25-year-old medical student who trained around his studies.
Rosa Parks Stayed Seated
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was not simply a tired seamstress who happened to say no.
Ruby Bridges Walks into First Grade
On November 14, 1960, a six-year-old named Ruby Bridges walked into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans escorted by U.S. marshals.
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.
Saint Cyr Helped Lis Hartel onto the Podium
In September 1944, while she was pregnant, Danish rider Lis Hartel developed polio. For a while she could not walk at all.
Seventy Years in an Iron Lung
Paul Alexander caught polio in 1952 when he was just six years old, and within days the disease left him unable to breathe on his own. He spent the next 70-plus years in an iron lung, a seven-foot metal cylinder that pushed air into his lungs.