Learning to Write My Biography

One of the most favorite and enjoyable categories of books that I read are biographical. Although Billy Graham’s last book: Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well is not a pure biography, I have reread it for the third time. I wound't say it is a great book, rather; written by a great man. Reading the book brought tears to my eyes, and prayer of confession, because I have been putting off or denying some of the areas Graham addresses. He doesn't water down the difficulties of aging, but he is helpful in showing practically what to focus on so that I can finish my life well and leave a positive legacy for those I leave behind. And that is, in large part, for my enjoyment of reading biographies.

Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish philosopher, wrote, “Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.” I think that is true because in reading the accounts of men and women of history, I find myself living in many places; and I hear fragments of my own story. The questions and thoughts I consider my own suddenly appear before me in the life of another, sometimes long before my existance. The struggle I find wearying is given meaning in the story of someone else who overcame much of the account of one who has lived beautifully in the midst of loss. It may be that I move toward biography because I seem to know that life is too short to learn only by my own experience.

My spiritual (Christian) worldview embraces a similar idea. The most direct attempt in scripture to define faith is done so by the writer of Hebrews. The eleventh chapter begins, “Now faith is being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you do not see.“ Perhaps recognizing the weight and mystery of faith and the difficulty of defining it, the writer of Hebrews immediately moves from this definition to descriptions of men and women who have lived "sure of hope" and "certain of the unseen." From Noah and Abraham, to Rahab and saints never named, I am given an image of faith moving across the pages of history, the gift of God in the strange stories of the faithful, the hope by which countless lives were guided. In this brief gathering of biographies, I glean that faith is understood functionally as much as philosophically, and that faith itself is more fully understood by looking at the lives of the faithful. For in between the lines that describe faithful men and women is the God who makes faith possible in the first place.

At the end of his compelling list, the writer of Hebrews concludes that since I am surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, I am likewise invited to run with the thought of God's enduring influence, confident that God is moving in my biography and yet beyond it. Amen