Mentors

Art:

Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, Southern Bavarian: Schloss Neischwanstoa) is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Fussen in southwest Bavaria, Germany.  The palace was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat, and in honor of Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.

The castle was intended as a home for the King, until he died in 1886. It was open to the public shortly after his death. Since then, more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer. (These numbers are before COVID pandemic.)

I painted this Oil of the castle a few years ago.  I am drawn to historic architecture and this castle, though built not that long ago, caught my attention.  I am sharing it in connection with this week’s Thought—Mentors.  It served as a kind of mentor for me in producing this painting.

Thought:

Mentor(ship) is a relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person.  I suspect it is next to impossible to name every ‘mentor’ in our lives.  For me, the most influential mentoring in my life has often been through their writing.  I recently developed a list of fifteen people who, in my life to this moment, have been mentors.  Someday I may share the list in this blog.  But not today.

It did come to me the other day, how important and impactful certain phrases and quotes, from a variety of sources, have made an impact on me.  So, I want to share a few with you this week.

Quotes from Mentors

“Love is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved.” / “Love follows knowledge.”                                                                                                                                             — Thomas Aquinas

“The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail.”         — Charles R Swindoll

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”                                                             — Earl Nightingale

“There are no shortcuts to maturity.” / “You’ll know you are maturing when you begin to see the hand of God in the random, baffling, and seemingly pointless circumstances of life.”                                                                                                                                                          — Rick Warren

“You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”                                                                                                                                 — Martin Luther

“If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed.  But if you look at Christ, you’ll be at rest!”                                                                                               — Corrie ten Boom

“Never doubt in the dark what God told you in the light.”                                                           — V. Raymond Edman

“The greatness of a man’s [or woman’s] power is in the measure of his [her] surrender.”  — William Booth

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves.  We’re still trying to give orders and interfering with God’s work within us.”                                                                                               — A. W. Tozer

“There are two kinds of people:  those who say to God ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right then, have it your way.’”                                                                                                      — C. S. Lewis

[1]“In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic runner Eric Liddell says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel God’s pleasure.”  Later he says, “to give up running would be to hold him [God] in contempt.”  ‘there are no unspiritual abilities, just misused ones.  Start using yours for ‘God’s pleasure.”

“People don’t care what we know until they know we care.” / “Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” / “Doing the right thing daily, compounds over time.”                                                                                                   — John Maxwell

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”                           — Jim Elliot

 “Be proactive.” / “Put first things first.”/ “Seek first to understand, and then to be understood.” / “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. Most people listen with the intent to reply.”                                                                                                            —Stephen R. Covey

Final Thought

By sharing this short list of quotes from fourteen people, who have been ‘mentors’ to literally hundreds of thousands, without context and perhaps without a biographical understanding of the speaker, may have been unfair.  Nevertheless, I hope you will forgive me, and I pray you too may find some ‘mentoring’ from them for your life this week!

[1] The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren, p. 75