Category: Black and white Portraits

Vincent Van Gogh

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  • Only when I fall do I get up again.”
    – Vincent Van Gogh
  • I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed.”
    – Vincent Van Gogh
  • I’m such a nobody.”
    – Vincent Van Gogh
  • I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”
    – Vincent Van Gogh
  • What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? ”
    – Vincent Van Gogh
  • I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove. ”
    – Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh. An unloved man in his life in every way. No one wanted his paintings , no one wanted his company and no one wanted his perspective on life. You might not know that he studied theology, but was kicked out of church for preaching the Bible too literally, he failed at everything he tried to do, and as far as he knew even his paintings were a failure. He only sold one small painting in his lifetime, because people didn’t like his original and unique style of brushwork, he painted because it was all he could do. He only knew rejection but still he painted, still he gave the world over 800 pieces of artwork, not because they made him rich or because they pleased others. Man was made to work for a purpose and if the only work you can do is paint then paint, if it’s to teach, teach if it’s to be a parent be the best parent you can, if it’s to lead then lead well, if it’s to speak speak truth. Whatever you can do, do it with all your strength regardless if others accept it – because you never know the impact your work will have on the world. We are made with eternity in our hearts and I think there’s something deep inside each of us that knows the work we do on earth will outlast us if we do it with all our heart.

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore. ”

– Vincent Van Gogh

If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. ”

– Vincent Van Gogh

Mr. Frankyl

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“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Victor Frankl

Viktor Frankl survived a nazi concentration camp, though his mother father and wife did not. He determined as a neurologist, psychiatrist and philosopher that attitude is the last of the human freedoms and it cannot be taken from a man when everything else can be and for him as an Austrian Jewish man everything was taken. how can We not admire this man, who took particular interest in studying depression and suicide, set up counseling centers and headed a female suicide prevention program seeking to decrease teen suicide. After seeing his family murdered and suffered in a concentration camp he somehow rose from the ashes returned to Vienna and became head of the neurological department publishing the well known book, “man’s search for meaning.” Our lives are weighed down every day with things we cannot change or control and I think the temptation is to crumble beneath this reality. Unless we change our approach. Viktor is proof that humanity has the inborn ability to be resilient. His life is evidence of an inner dimension of strength that permeates our DNA and transcends the darkness in the world. He says this, “what is to give light must endure burning.” Not only is Viktor himself evidence of resiliency in mankind, but of reality that suffering produces something far beyond anything we can produce synthetically, suffering is the organic way life emerges. And even in suffering we have a choice in how we will respond; even in our darkest hour there is a shred of freedom and hope and light.

C.S. Lewis

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“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

― C.S. Lewis

Born in Ireland in 1899 Lewis was a scholar an author and most of all he was a man of strong Christian faith. You probably know his most beloved children’s books the chronicles of Narnia, but did you know he wrote over 30 other books? That he held degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, that the author of the Hobbit, J.R. Tolkien, was one of his best friends and that as a child C.S. Lewis was at an atheist? Lewis lost his mother at a young age and didn’t marry until his old age and then lost his wife a few short years later. Yet through all of these challenges Lewis was able to not only speak to his generation of love, joy, faith and truth but to our generation! Recently I read a book by Lewis entitled the “problem of Pain” it’s a short book and quite theological but I would highly recommend it to any who have wrestled with this question: how can God be all good and all powerful?

C.S. Lewis – “God whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain.”

Harriet Tubman

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“Twant me, ‘‘twas the Lord. I always told him, ‘I trust you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,’ and He always did.” – Harriet TUBMAN

Here stands a woman we all admire. Her strength, resiliency and determination to be free inspires regardless of what divides us. I am fascinated that Harriet with all her setbacks , weaknesses and obstacles rose up to victory; not in the name of herself or feminism or social justice. She rose in the name of God who gave her strength. Americans should look to her , perhaps we should look to how she walked, prayed and believed, perhaps we ought to look to her savior and her faith and find strength for our own journey to freedom. It’s not politics that divide us or color or religion in my opinion, what divides is that we are enslaved by our own self-righteousness , sinful nature and the need to be right. It is the heart of man that needs to be set free above all else. “ God’s time is always near. He set the north star in the heavens; he gave me the strength in my limbs; he meant I should be free.” – Harriet Tubman Harriet cannot be separated in any way from her faith in a loving God without forfeiting her accomplishments and giving up the freedom she gained. It was her desire for freedom working in tandem with her faith in the power of God that broke the chains she was bound by. I want to remember that Harriet struck against the root of slavery with one act of bravery, but there have been many since then; the freedoms we have access to today in this country were first sought by those who trusted in God to free them. we cannot have one without the other. Freedom without God or God without freedom.Dear God raise up a generation of Harriet Tubmans! “I could have freed thousands more, she said, if they had only known they were slaves”