In the year 1880, there was a painter in America named Emmanuel Ningger.

One day, Ningger went to a wholesale store to buy all the basic necessities for his family. Ningger brought lunch from home and $20.

All the items were already in Ningger's shopping basket, and then he approached the cashier to pay. The cashier accepted the $20 and gave change to Ningger.

What happened next was that the cashier's hands became sweaty. Then he noticed streaks and lines on his hands when he held the $20 given by Ningger.

He reported it to his manager, and the manager called a police officer who identified that the $20 bill was undoubtedly counterfeit. The police immediately went to Ningger's house and arrested the counterfeiter.

What's astonishing is that during the police investigation, they found that Ningger had forged the $20 bill by painting it with his own hands! The result was extraordinary, exactly the same! 

Had it not been for the "bleeding" paint, he might never have been caught.

Interestingly, while searching his property, the police discovered three paintings in Ningger's workshop that, if sold, would have been worth no less than $5000!

*Actual image of a Ningger $100 note.

Isn't it ironic? Ningger needed only to invest the same amount of time and talent to paint his counterfeit $20 bills as to create paintings worth $5000 or more. Same investment but very different values and outcomes.

He was a $5000 calibre painter, but, unfortunately, he was unable to see or tap into the value of his own talent and potential.

Author Kent Crokett asks, "Are you reaching all of your God-given potential?

Michelangelo attempted to carve forty-four statues during his life, but he finished only fourteen. Although we are familiar with some of his work, such as the statue of David, the thirty that he didn't finish are also intriguing. One is a huge chunk of marble from which he sculpted only an elbow. Another shows a leg, thigh, knee, foot, and toes, but the rest of the body is locked inside the marble.

[Kent Crockett graduated from Texas A&M University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and is the senior pastor of the Church of Living Water in Prattville, Alabama. He is the author of The 911 Handbook, Making Today Count for Eternity, and I Once Was Blind but Now I Squint, and has been published in a number of Christian magazines.]

One of my all-time favorite musical plays is Man of La Mancha," says Bruce Larson:

The story's hero is a crazy old man suffering from what we would now call senile psychosis. The action takes place a hundred years past the age of chivalry and there are no knights anymore. But, thinking he is one, Don Quixote puts on a strange suit of armor and rides forth into the world to battle evil and protect the weak and powerless. He brings along his funny little servant Sancho Panza as his squire. When they arrive at a broken-down old inn used by mule traders, Don Quixote calls the innkeeper the lord of a great castle. The innkeeper tells him he is bonkers. In the inn he meets the most miserable human beings imaginable, a pathetic orphan girl who does the most menial chores and is used sexually by every mule trader passing through. He pronounces this wretched girl the great lady, Dulcinea, and he begs for her handkerchief as a token to take into battle. She reacts with fury.

At the end of the play the old man is close to death and no longer suffering from these delusions. In a moving scene, all the people he renamed appear at his bedside and beg him not to change. His excitement about their future has transformed them and they have become the people that this insane visionary saw in them.