True, sourced stories for sermons and lessons. Search by keyword, theme, or Bible book.
68 illustrations found
A Brother’s Hug in a Dallas Courtroom
In 2018 an off-duty Dallas police officer, Amber Guyger, walked into the wrong apartment and shot and killed Botham Jean, an innocent man sitting in his own home.
Amy Carmichael Had to Do Something
In 1901, a seven-year-old Indian girl named Preena escaped from a Hindu temple and ran to Amy Carmichael, a young missionary from Ireland. Preena's widowed mother had dedicated her to be "married to the gods," which meant a life of abuse.
An Eleven-Year-Old Told Lincoln to Grow a Beard
In October 1860, an eleven-year-old girl named Grace Bedell in Westfield, New York saw a picture of Abraham Lincoln and wrote him a letter. She told him his face was so thin that if he let his whiskers grow, he would look a great deal better, and she would try to get her brothers to vote for him.
Anthony Robles Wrestled on One Leg
Anthony Robles was born without a right leg. He tried a prosthetic, but at age three he pulled it off and chose crutches instead.
Bessie Coleman Learned French to Fly
Bessie Coleman grew up in Texas and later worked as a manicurist in Chicago. When her brother came home from World War I talking about women flying airplanes in France, she decided the sky would be her arena.
Bethany Hamilton Couldn’t Wait to Surf
In 2003, thirteen-year-old Bethany Hamilton was lying on her surfboard off Hawaii with her left arm dangling in the water. A shark came up and attacked, pulling her back and forth.
Bikila Ran Barefoot Through Rome
The 1960 Olympic marathon in Rome started at 5:30 in the evening and finished in the dark, with torches lighting the ancient streets. One of the runners was an Ethiopian named Abebe Bikila, and he was running barefoot.
Bonhoeffer Refused Cheap Grace
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant young German pastor and theologian. In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer warned against what he called cheap grace.
Bunyan Would Not Promise to Stop Preaching
When Charles II took the throne, the freedom to worship outside the Church of England ended. By January 1661, preacher John Bunyan was in the county jail.
Cliff Young Shuffles to Victory
In 1983 a 61-year-old potato farmer named Cliff Young lined up for the Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon, about 875 kilometers, against some of the best ultramarathon runners in the world.
Desmond Doss: One More Man
Desmond Doss joined the Army in World War II as a combat medic, but as a Seventh-day Adventist he had vowed he would never kill, so he refused to carry a gun.
Eighty Strangers Form a Human Chain
On a Saturday evening in July 2017 at Panama City Beach, Florida, two young boys got caught in a powerful rip current. Before long their mother, their grandmother, and others were caught too, until nine people were struggling to stay afloat and gulping seawater.
Eighty-Six Years I Have Served Him
Polycarp was an old man, the bishop of Smyrna, and tradition says he had been taught by the apostle John. Sometime in the second century, Roman authorities came to arrest him.
Elisabeth Elliot Moves In with Her Husband’s Killers
Elisabeth Elliot and her husband Jim were missionaries in Ecuador, and their daughter Valerie was born in 1955. In 1956, Jim and his fellow missionaries were killed by the Waorani people they had been trying to reach with the gospel.
Enough at the Opera to Have Carried It
William Wilberforce had spent nine years fighting to end the British slave trade. On March 15, 1796, his bill finally looked like it might pass.
Everyone Off the Plane on the Hudson
On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York. About two minutes later it flew into a flock of birds, and both engines lost almost all their power.
Eyam Shut Itself In
In September 1665, plague arrived in the English village of Eyam in Derbyshire. As it spread, the rector William Mompesson and the former minister Thomas Stanley led the village to do something hard.
Father Kolbe Takes Another Man’s Place
In the summer of 1941, after a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz, the camp leader picked ten men to die by starvation as punishment. One of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out that he had a wife and children.
Fosbury Flopped Backward to Gold
Before Dick Fosbury, high jumpers went over the bar face down using the straddle or the scissors. As a teenager at Medford High in Oregon, Fosbury worked out a different way.
Frederick Douglass Traded Bread for Lessons
As an enslaved boy in Baltimore, Frederick Douglass had a mistress who started teaching him the alphabet. Then her husband found out and shut it down.