Sermon Illustrations

When Ivo Andric was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1961, the committee cited his epic novel The Bridge on the Drina as reason enough for the award. The Bridge on the Drina is historical fiction. It traces the history of what we once knew as Yugoslavia and the various civilizations that have risen and fallen there. The ...

When Connie Mack organized the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team in 1901, people made fun of them. John McGraw, who managed the New York Giants, called them "The White Elephants." Mack knew how to respond. He made the white elephant the team logo. You will see it still today on the left sleeve of the uniform of...

General George Washington had known nothing but defeat in the American Revolution until he won the famous victory at Trenton on Christmas Day, 1776. Every school boy or girl knows how he waited until the Hessian soldiers fighting for Britain were drunk from partying, and then attacked and defeated them. What is not so...

The Mayfly lives only six hours! It gets its name from the fact that it hatches in the month of May. Yet the eggs of the Mayfly do not hatch for three years! A six-hour lifetime seems mighty brief, but then fourscore years and ten seem short to the human who has reached them. If we could compare our longest life-span with...

One of the mysteries of medicine concerns the epidemic of influenza that swept around the world in 1918. Called "Spanish influenza," the disease suddenly began in March of 1918 and ended just as suddenly in November of the same year. During that time over 21 million people died. The disease struck every country on earth!...

When words from another language are translated into English we often say that something is lost in the translation. There was evidence of that in an information booklet in a Japanese hotel. Explaining the air conditioning system the booklet said, (with some creative spelling) "Cooles and Heates: If you want just condition of...

In November of 1995 newspapers reported the story of lotus seeds found in a dry lake bed in China. They were 1,288 years old! Seven of them were obtained by the University of California at Los Angeles. The seeds were germinated, sprouted, and a plant grew from them. They are thought to be the oldest seeds ever...

The oldest living things on earth are the bristlecone pines in the Iyno National Forest in California. They have endured for 4,800 years. The oldest dates from 2900 B.C. These trees were growing when Moses was given the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. They were already ancient when Christ was on...

When William the Conqueror defeated the English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, he felt some remorse for the many who died there. So he built an Abbey to atone for all the blood shed. He built it on the battlefield itself. He built it so that the high altar would be on the very spot where King Harold died. But we can never...