Category: Biographies

Michelangelo was one of the greatest artists of all time. He preferred to work in sculpture but became reknown for his paintings. It took a lot to persuade him to paint the ceiling of Sistine Chapel but it eventually became his most famous masterpiece. The walls were already painted with a multitude of stories of Moses and Jesus. Michelangelo took responsibility for painting over 1,000 square metres of the ceiling area between 1508-1512. He covered it with 300 majestic biblical scenes ranging from creation to the last judgment scene.

What most people don't know is that at least 12 other painters helped him with this feat … all of whose names are unknown to us today. In fact, even art experts are unsure which sections were painted by Michelangelo and which were painted by others. 

This is a great example of the principle of teamwork. No person does anything great or significant alone. Others are always involved – encouraging, supporting and contributing. 

Everyone has a story. Our story fits into God's wider story – history. It also connects with other people's stories. We can learn a lot by listening to other people's stories and how God has worked in their lives, including their successes and failures. 

Click here to read a few articles on the lives of a number of influential people.

You also might like to check out Warren Wierebe's excellent book: 50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning from the Spiritual Giants of the Faith. 

Together, let's live and learn. 

In life, it is so easy to focus on what we don't have rather than what we do, on our limitations rather than our opportunities. Helen Keller is one of the most inspiring example of someone who rose above her challenges to do something commendable with her life. 

Helen was born in 1880 in Alabama. She was born blind. I don't know about you, but I was afraid of the dark as a child and was really happy to be able to leave a light on in the hallway. I can't imagine living your entire life … in the dark. Not only that, she was born deaf. If anyone had a reason to curl up in a corner and give life a miss, Helen did.

But she didn't. Through the inspiration of her teacher, Annie Sullivan, she started to make a life for herself. In fact, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree at the age of 24 and she was top of her class! Not only that, she went on to be an author, a lecturer and an activist, establishing a foundation to help blind and deaf people all around the world. No wonder she ended up on Time magazine's list of the 100 most important people of century. She died in 1968 at age 87.

Here are some of her inspirational quotes:

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a man-made world.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched … but are felt in the heart.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

I seldom think of my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. 

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in to be content.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all!

Here is an inspiring story about Billy Graham that was recently passed on to me.

Billy Graham is now 90 years old with Parkinson’s disease.

In January 2000, leaders in Charlotte, North Carolina,  invited their favorite son, Billy Graham, to a luncheon in his honor.

Billy initially hesitated to accept the invitation because he struggles with Parkinson’s disease. But the Charlotte  leaders said, ‘We don’t expect a major address. Just  come and let us honor you.’ So he agreed..

After wonderful things were said about him, Dr. Graham  stepped to the rostrum, looked at the crowd, and said,  ‘I’m reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who  this month has been honored by Time magazine as the  Man of the Century. Einstein was once traveling from  Princeton on a train when the conductor came down the  aisle, punching the tickets of every passenger. When he  came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket. He  couldn’t find his ticket, so he reached in his trouser pockets.  It wasn’t there, so he looked in his briefcase but couldn’t find it.  Then he looked in the seat beside him. He still couldn’t find it.

The conductor said, ‘Dr. Einstein, I know who you are.  We all know who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket.  Don’t worry about it.’

Einstein nodded appreciatively. The conductor continued  down the aisle punching tickets. As he was ready to  move to the next car, he turned around and saw the great  physicist down on his hands and knees looking under his  seat for his ticket.

The conductor rushed back and said, ‘Dr. Einstein,  Dr. Einstein, don’t worry, I know who you are No problem.  You don’t need a ticket.  I’m sure you bought one.’

Einstein looked at him and said, ‘Young man, I too, know who I am.  What I don’t know is where I’m going.”

Having said that Billy Graham continued, ‘See the suit I’m wearing? It’s a brand new suit. My children, and my grandchildren are telling me I’ve gotten a little slovenly in my old age. I used to be a bit more fastidious. So I went out and bought a new suit for this  luncheon and one more occasion.

You know what that occasion is? This is the suit in which I’ll be buried. But when you hear I’m dead, I don’t want  you to immediately remember the suit I’m wearing.  I want you to remember this:

I not only know who I am .. I also know where I’m going.’

How do you do a SHORT blog post (instructions of him who must be obeyed) on C.S. Lewis? There are few writers who have so profoundly affected my spiritual formation as the writings of C.S. Lewis. For a detailed bio of his life visit this web site or this one.

“Jack”, as he was known by his family and friends, was a prolific writer (he also used pseudonyms like Clive Hamilton, N. W. Clerk, and Nat Whilk), delighting children and adults alike with his Chronicles of Narnia series and totally undoing a stoic adult in books like, A Grief Observed or The Problem of Pain. For the Lewis beginner a good book to start would be Mere Christianity, which begins with a discussion of some reasons for believing that God exists, and why it matters that He does, and then continues with an account of the redeeming work of God in Christ. In this book, Lewis tries to confine himself to the core beliefs of Christianity and steers clear of disagreements between denominations – resulting in the word “Mere” in the title.

Lewis was a reluctant convert to Christianity confessing in his book Surprised by Joy (1955): "I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England." He was never short of critics, some who went as far as calling him a dangerous heretic and infidel, while others sought to debunk his arguments, such as John Beversluis (C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion).

Jack’s friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien is legendary. Tolkien played a key role in Lewis’s conversion and Lewis helped expand his fictional writing. Both of them taught at Oxford, both were interested in literature, and both wrote fictional books with strong Christian themes and principles. Like any good friendship there were strong disagreements such as Tolkien’s dislike for the first Narnia book, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which he thought was too strong on Christian themes and messages and he didn’t approve of the way Lewis seemed to beat the reader over the head with such obvious symbols. The two of them were members of an informal Oxford group of writers and teachers known as 'The Inklings.' After Lewis met and married Joy Gresham, he grew apart from his old friends and Tolkien took it personally.

I have read several biographies of Lewis and would recommend Jack – A Life of C.S. Lewis by George Sayer. George was a long standing friend of Jack’s and also a member of the Inklings.

There is no one quite as quotable as Lewis (I am not including the Bible or Jesus in that statement). Below are some samples. You can gather more from a great collection called The Quotable Lewis, edited by Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root.

• "A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."

• "God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself because it is not there. There is no such thing."

• "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'

• "Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there’s no God after all,' but 'So this is what God is really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'" [after Joy’s death]

• "It is hard to have patience with people who say, 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter." [From A Grief Observed]

• "A rejection, or in Scripture’s strong language, a crucifixion of the natural self, is the passport to everlasting life. Nothing that has not died will be resurrected."

• "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."

To finish, here is an excerpt from The Last Battle, the last book of the Narnia series, the last page, and the last paragraph:

" . . .. and as he spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was on the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before."

Nicole Conner