Second Nature

Our world is desperately in need of models worth following. Authentic heroes. People of integrity, whose lives inspire us to do better, to climb higher, to stand taller. This has always been true.

Maybe that explains why biographies of great men and women have fascinated me throughout my life. I can still remember the first Bible I owned because of the colorful pictures of various characters interspersed through its pages. Each one loomed larger than life as I relived each drama, imagining the sounds, entering into the action-packed scenes portrayed on the pages. I still find delight in reentering those scenes from antiquity. My soul is stirred and my heart inspired as those saints of old, people of “whom the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:38), play out their lives, make their mistakes, accomplish incredible feats, and finally pass on into glory. What encouragement! What enrichment!

The words of the Russian poet Boris Pasternik come to mind: “It is not revolutions and upheavals that clear the road to new and better days, but someone’s soul inspired and ablaze.”1 It is my hope that you will be enlightened and encouraged from beginning each new and better day spending time with the Great Lives you’ll discover in this daily devotional. Since our world is desperately in need of models worth following, here are ten deserving of our time and attention to help us endure the uncertain challenges of the future.

—Chuck Swindoll

Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives: Daily Insight from Great Lives of the Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007).