Too Succeed… You’ve Got to Fail

            I have in my files a bulletin article written several years ago by a fellow named Coy Roper. It is so good—I thought I would pass it along in its entirety. Be encouraged!

            Baseball fans are all talking about the new base-stealing record set by Ricky Henderson of the Oakland A's. The last time I heard, he had stolen 122 bases, breaking Lou Brock's one-season record of 118, with more than a month still left in the season!

            But before he set that new record, he set another; he broke Ty Cobb's old record of being thrown out 38 times in one season, when he was thrown out for the 39th time in 1982 in a game with the Tigers!

            And that reminded me that Babe Ruth not only held the career record for home runs for many years; he also held (and still holds) the career record for strikeouts!

            And the moral of the story? To succeed much, you've got to try much--and expect to fail often. The preachers who make the most mistakes are the preachers who preach most often. The personal workers who have the greatest number of failures are also the personal workers who win the most souls. Don't quit just because you get "thrown out"; it's those who try often and fail sometimes that end up succeeding.

Demerits!

Mother’s Day has caused me to reflect upon the high cost of raising boys.  Recently, I saw a PBS special on Dwight Eisenhower. He entered West Point at 21 to play football and get a free education. He had no military career in mind.

Then, he hurt his knee and his football career was over. Devastated, he became despondent.  He recovered enough to graduate, but that was about all he did. He showed no academic promise. He was among those, who had received the most demerits. Here was a 25-year-old man at the U. S. Military Academy—and he has disciplinary problems.

Then, maturity began to kick in. He married. His wife bore him a son. Heading into his thirties, he began to treat his military service seriously. It became a career to him.

Slowly, he rose through the ranks. Upper level officers began seeing his gifts for organization. He entered Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and graduated first in his class. By his mid-fifties, he had completed leading the greatest collection of armed forces in the history of the world.

Still, I think about his mother. What did she think when she got reports that her 25-year-old single (unusual for that era) son was having disciplinary issues at West Point? I suppose she had to summon what most mothers have in the history of the world—patience. But they usually do.

Do mothers self-generate this discipline? I think not. I believe their creator instilled it within them. The Creator is the patient one (see II Pet. 3:15 for an example).

Who do we see more patient than a mother? No one—except for God.