Perseverance

I WAS watching the Cleveland American League team play the Boston Red Sox and witnessed one of the most dramatic, spectacular catches I have ever seen…

Author A. J. Cronin was a medical doctor at age thirty-three in London’s West End, and, he says, “I wasn’t a bad doctor.” But he was frustrated by a certain character flaw that inhibited everything that he did…

If you haven’t heard of Irwin Rosenberg, here’s his inspiring story. As a junior officer he was discharged from the Navy when he was diagnosed with cancer. That was the standard military procedure at the time…

At the university there was a piano teacher that was simply and affectionately known as “Herman.” One night at a university concert, a distinguished piano player suddenly became ill while performing an extremely difficult piece…

There was a golfer who was thrown into a cage in the Hanoi Hilton for 7 years. He didn’t pick up a club during this time but played golf every day in his mind, imagining each course and shot…

In the book, A Home Forum Reader, Glenn Wasson related a simple experience that had a profound effect on him…

, R ‘ Therefore We Must Go Forward William Carey, the “Father of Modem Missions,” wanted to translate the Bible into as many Indian languages as possible. He established a large printshop in Ser­ ampore where translation work was continually being done…

At that critical moment, Numbers 23:19 turned up in their daily devotional book: Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?…

A preacher who was growing weary in the ministry had a dream. He saw himself pounding away at a huge chunk of granite with a pickaxe. It was his job to break it into small pieces…

ONE OF my preacher students was walking down a steep hill in Boston one day just after a heavy snow had fallen. On the way he saw a poor boy from a slum neighborhood skiing with only one ski…

I HAVE written at other times of the great man to whom the title of this story was applied, and I have written about him because I once spent an hour with him in the General Electric laboratories in Schenectady, New York…

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

“If you can’t fly, then run, If you can’t run, then walk, If you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”

We are troubled on every side, but not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Cast down, but not destroyed…

An old McGuffey reader told the story of a small boy who undertook the task of shoveling through a great drift of snow…

About 4 hours north of Sydney in Australia, in a national park, a fire is smoldering out of control and it’s been doing so for thousands of years…

In his book How To Be Born Again, Billy Graham tells of a missionary who was imprisoned by the Japanese in China…

A young boy was watching a stonecutter. “Why do you use so many chisels?” he asked, seeing one chisel after another thrown in a heap near by. “Well, the stone is hard and chisels get dull,” the stonecutter said…

How long should you try? Until.

How slow does a snail go? One study clocked a snail at 0.00758 miles per hour--or 40 feet in one hour. No wonder we use the phrase moving at a snail’s pace to mean “slow.”…

There is an endurance of running a race, of running a marathon, where you will endure. You will persistently push forward because you want to cross that finish line…

One was an optimistic soul. But the other took the gloomy view. “We’ll drown,” he lamented without much ado, And with a last despairing cry, He flung up his legs and said “Goodbye.”…

An inventor fails 999 times and, and if he succeeds once, he’s victorious. He treats his failures as practice shots.

When an old reformer had his projects rejected on the ground that they were impossible, he retorted, “Impossible! If that is all there is against them, let us go ahead.”

When she was fifteen, Linda Stafford announced to her English class that she would someday write and illustrate her own books. Half of the class sneered and the remainder just laughed at her prophecy…

Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer. Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything…

0 Susanna! What a difficult life. She was the twenty-fifth child in a dissenter’s family. Though brilliant, she procured little education. Though strong-willed, she lived in a male-dominated age. She married an older man and bore him nineteen children…

Sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions. — Dopp In times of affliction we commonly meet with the sweetest ex- perience of the love of God. — Bunyan As we sometimes hold a crooked rod over the fire to straighten it, so God sometimes…

1 morning I watched a couple of cow punchers going out to bring in a wild steer from his range in the mountains. They took along 1 of those shaggy little gray donkeys, a burrow…

John Wesley’s father once asked pends much more on removing its faults than on boasting of its qualities.” his wife: “How could you have the thing twenty times over?”…

It has been told that Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb before finally succeeding. When asked how it felt to fail 1,000 times, Edison replied, “I did not fail 1,000 times…

A television ad about Bill Demby changed his life from that of a quiet hero to a minor celebrity. The ad was for DuPont…

A lot has been written about Cal Ripken Jr.’s phenomenal record of playing in more than 2,500 consecutive games. Though Cal Ripken is immensely talented, this record is not the result of talent. It is the result of character…

Do you remember the classic fright scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, Psycho? If you saw the movie, you no doubt can still relive how you reacted when Janet Leigh was stabbed to death in the shower…

After a soldier had seen one of his companions blown to pieces by a shell, he said thoughtfully, “It will take more than that to stop you.”

My men are not braver than other troops—they are just brave five minutes longer.

One sense of doggedly is “obstinate resolution,” which trait of the dog it will do to cherish, if we are careful so to avoid others as to become neither doggish, nor doggerel writers.

“It is not doing the thing which we like to do,” Goethe wrote, “but liking to do the thing which we have to do, that makes life blessed.” till our nerves were so ragged that we could not endure the word ‘automobile.’…

When the other soldiers laughed at an Athenian soldier who was crippled, he silenced them by saying: “I am here to fight, not to run.”

The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Think not ofrest; though dreamsbesweet, Startupand ply yourheavenward feet: IsnotGod’soath upon yourhead, Ne’erto sink back onslothfulbed, Neveragain yourloinsuntie, Nor letyourtorcheswasteand die, Till,when theshadowsthickest fall, Yehear yourMaster’smidnightcall?- Keble.

“The only difference between the dificult and the impossible,” said an old-time reformer, “is that the impossible takes a little longer time.”

In the sentence of life the Devil may be a comma but DO NOT LET him be the PERIOD!

When asked how he had discovered the law of gravity, Sir Isaac Newton replied: “By thinking about it continuously…

After a great snowstorm, a little fellow began to shovel a path through a large snow bank before his grandmother’s door. He had nothing but a small shovel with which to work…

Effect of. A very little girl undertook to carry a ton of coal, a shovelful at a time, from the sidewalk to a bin in the cellar…

When young Henry Fawcett was hunting with his father, an accidental firing of a gun blinded the boy…

In 1953, Hillary was a beekeeper who decided to climb Mount Everest. Despite not getting the permit initially, they prepared and climbed with dedication…