True, sourced stories for sermons and lessons. Search by keyword, theme, or Bible book.
27 illustrations found
Ben Hogan Threw Himself Across His Wife
On a foggy morning, February 2, 1949, golf champion Ben Hogan and his wife Valerie were driving home to Fort Worth on a two-lane Texas highway when a Greyhound bus trying to pass a truck came straight at them in their lane.
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.
Clemente’s Last Flight
Roberto Clemente was one of baseball's greatest stars: 3,000 hits, four batting titles, two World Series championships with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Dr. Tom Stayed in the Nuba Mountains
Dr. Tom Catena is a Catholic missionary from Amsterdam, New York. In Sudan's war-torn Nuba Mountains, where bombing has been part of life and aid has been restricted, he became the only doctor permanently based there.
Emperor Penguins Take Turns in the Cold
Emperor penguins live through the Antarctic winter on the open ice, where wind chills can drop to 76 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. They survive by working together.
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.
Gladys Aylward and the Hundred Orphans
Gladys Aylward had worked as a London housemaid since she was 14. The China Inland Mission turned her down after she failed their exams.
Harriet Tubman Never Lost a Passenger
In 1849 Harriet Tubman learned that she was about to be sold, so she escaped slavery in Maryland and made it to freedom. Most people would have stayed safe up north.
Irena Sendler’s Children
When World War II broke out, Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker in Warsaw. After the Nazis sealed some 400,000 Jews inside the ghetto, she got a permit to go in and inspect sanitary conditions, and she used it to help.
Kerri Strug’s Second Vault
At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics the U.S. women's gymnastics team was on the edge of its first-ever team gold, but the Russians were closing fast.
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.
Oseola McCarty Gives It All
Oseola McCarty spent her life washing and ironing other people's clothes in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In 1995 she gave $150,000, most of her life savings, to the University of Southern Mississippi to help students who needed scholarships.
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.
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.
Team Hoyt: A Father Who Pushed
Dick Hoyt's son Rick was born with cerebral palsy and couldn't walk or talk. Starting in 1980, Dick began pushing Rick in a custom racing chair in the Boston Marathon.
The Four Chaplains Give Away Their Life Jackets
Shortly before 1 a.m. on February 3, 1943, a German submarine torpedoed the Army transport ship Dorchester in the icy North Atlantic, with 902 men aboard.
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 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 in the Water Kept Passing the Line
On January 13, 1982, an Air Florida jet struck a Washington bridge and plunged into the ice-covered Potomac River. A rescue helicopter dropped a line to the few survivors clinging to the wreckage in the freezing water.