You have to love the spirit of Arthur Pedrick. Between 1962 and 1977, Arthur patented 162 inventions. Among other inventions, Arthur patented a bicycle with amphibious capability, a golf ball that could be steered in flight, and a way to supply water to the deserts of the world by keeping a constant supply of Arctic snowballs flying to the deserts with giant peashooters located in the Arctic.
What about his spirit is there to love? In the face of failure after failure, Arthur never quit trying. In 1902, the poetry editor of Atlantic Monthly returned a stack of poems to an aspiring poet. This note accompanied the unpublished poems, “Our magazine has no room for your vigorous verse.” The aspiring poet’s name is Robert Frost. In 1905, the University of Bern turned down a doctoral dissertation as “irrelevant and fanciful.” That aspiring scholar was Albert Einstein. In 1894, a teenager named Winston Churchill had a note on his report card which noted his “conspicuous lack of success.”
Faith is not just belief. Faith is a belief that allows one to keep on keeping on, even in the face of failure. Before he was the leader of a nation, Moses was a 40-year-old failure running from the Pharaoh. Before he was a preacher on Pentecost, Peter lied and denied that he even knew Jesus. Before he penned the Gospel of Mark, he offended the Apostle Paul so deeply that Paul would not even take Mark on a missionary trip with him.
It is not your failures that define you. It is how many times you are willing to fail and then try again. Everyone remembers Will Rogers for his great wit and sense of humor. He did not start out as a humorist. He started out as an act that entertained audiences with rope tricks. One day, in the middle of his act, Will failed. He got tangled up in his ropes. Facing people who had paid money to see him do rope tricks, he said, “A rope ain’t so bad to get tangled up in if it ain’t around your neck.” The audience roared. He loved their response to his humor. His failure changed his life.
Failure is not a sin. As the Bible says, “The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again. But one disaster is enough to overthrow the wicked” (Proverbs 24:16). You have only failed when you quit trying. There is a difference between saying, “I have failed” and “I am a failure.” Everyone fails, but not everyone is a failure.
~Lonnie Davis
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