True, sourced stories for sermons and lessons. Search by keyword, theme, or Bible book.
14 illustrations found
A Circle of Prayer 700 Meters Down
In 2010, a rockfall trapped 33 miners about 700 meters underground at the San Jose mine in northern Chile. They were stuck in a space about the size of a small apartment, with almost no food and heat that never dropped below about 90 degrees.
Daryl Davis Sits Down with the Klan
Daryl Davis is a Black blues musician who first met a Klansman after a gig, when a white man came up to say he'd never heard a Black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.
Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things
William Carey was an English shoemaker's apprentice who became convinced that the church should be taking the gospel to the whole world. In 1792 he helped organize a missionary society and preached a sermon with the call, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!"
Fixing Voyager from 15 Billion Miles Away
In November 2023, NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object in existence, started sending home gibberish. Engineers figured out that one memory chip in an onboard computer had failed, taking some of the spacecraft's code with it.
Jim Thorpe Got His Gold Back
At the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Jim Thorpe, a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, won both the pentathlon and the decathlon in dominant fashion.
Kevin Briggs Listened for 92 Minutes
On March 11, 2005, Kevin Berthia went to the Golden Gate Bridge. Overwhelmed by depression and medical bills for his premature daughter, he climbed over the rail.
Opportunity Kept Rolling
NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars on January 24, 2004. It was planned for a 90-day mission.
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 Oldest Tree Ever Cut Down
In the summer of 1964, a geographer named Donald Currey was studying ancient bristlecone pines below Wheeler Peak. He found a tree local mountaineers called Prometheus.
The River That Ran Free Again
In the early 1900s two dams went up on the Elwha River in Washington's Olympic Peninsula. They made electricity, but they also blocked salmon from the upper river for about a century.
The Stick Insects on One Bush
Lord Howe Island, off Australia's east coast, was once crawling with big, wingless stick insects about six inches long. Then in 1918 a shipwreck brought rats to the island, and the insects disappeared.
Twelve Seconds at Kitty Hawk
Everybody was watching Samuel Langley. He had backing from the Smithsonian and the War Department, and the press followed his every move.
Water at the Well-House
Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing as a small child, and for years she lived in what she later called a still, dark world. In March 1887 a teacher named Anne Sullivan came to Alabama.
Yellowstone Welcomed the Wolves Back
Early managers at Yellowstone National Park saw wolves as nothing but destructive predators. Between 1914 and 1926, at least 136 wolves were killed in the park, and by the 1940s wolf packs were nearly gone.