OUR GREATEST STRENGTHS ARE OUR GREATEST WEAKNESSES, OR IS IT ?

Few if any of you will ever know what it feels like to be Chuck Close.
A lot of you might not even know who he is but all of us have something important to learn from him.

Chuck Close is one of the greatest portrait artists of our time. If you glanced at his work, you would think you were simply looking at a photograph. In reality, you’re looking at paint, sometimes pencil and other times, thread. That’s just how brilliant he is.

If you knew his background, you wouldn’t think it would be possible. He can’t remember a single face that he meets. He suffers from prosopagnosia, a condition that leaves him unable to recognize faces. He can create a masterpiece with your face, but he can’t remember it.

You would think that for a person in Close’s situation, creating portraits would be the last thing he’d be doing. After all, faces are his greatest weakness but it’s just the opposite. It motivates him, even to the point of him saying, “everything in my art is driven by my disability.”

What makes his work that much more brilliant, it shouldn’t be coming out of him, but it is. His greatest strength is his weakness or is it? It’s provided a platform where his greatness can be amplified.

Few if any of us will ever have a condition like his, but we all deal with weakness or strength in one shape or form. Some of you feel completely inadequate, maybe some of you feel like your marriage is about to fall apart , maybe some of you have lost your job and you don’t see how you’ll make it. Where others might be battling cancer and you don’t know how much longer you can fight.

For every person, there is a place in their life where your strength and weakness exists. And it’s for that very reason that in every person, a platform exists, an opportunity. An opportunity to amplify the greatness of God.

So put him to the test, what have you got to loose?

Picture resources: artnet.com