Minute Meditations

Mary Pickford is reported to have said, ”To fall is not to fail, unless you fail to get up again.” The wise man Solomon said this by inspiration many years before. ”For a just man falleth seven times and riseth up again.”

The people who never fall never do anything. How can you fall sitting down? A young girl practicing figure skating to compete in the Olympics was told by her teacher, ”If you don’t fall while practicing then you are not learning enough to be a true champion.” People who do things will fall but if they are true champions then they will get up again, for to fall is not to fail, unless you fail to get up again.

David told us that ”the LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down.’

What a great comfort it is to know that the Lord will help when we fall, but how can He help those who won’t try?

Can we imagine a little baby wanting to learn to walk saying, ”I’m not going to walk until I can do it without falling down.” That little child would never walk. We learn by doing, by trying and falling and trying again. Nothing worthwhile was ever done without falling over and over again. Thomas Edison is reported to have told a discouraged employee who had complained that ten thousand experiments had failed, that it was not failure at all because they now knew ten thousand ways that didn’t work and so they were that much closer to the one that would.

Babe Ruth is remembered as the ”king of swat” because he hit so many home runs but he struck out more times than any other player in his day. When Carl Yastrezemski was honored for having collected his 3,000th hit, he recalled that he had been up to bat over 10,000 times. That meant, he said, ”I’ve been unsuccessful over seven thousand times.”

An average major leaguer hitting 250 gets three hits for every twelve times at bat. He will probably make a salary of somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000. The superstar who bats 333 gets four hits for every twelve times at bat. He makes over one million dollars a year. Yet he only gets one more hit every three games. That may not be much more but he makes ten times more. He probably gets more hits because he swings more often.

Going back to Solomon’s description of a just man, he falls seven times and gets up seven times. The failure falls seven times and gets up only six times. Do we qualify as just persons or failures? Do we keep trying even after we have fallen? Do we put our trust in God and realize that He will always help us up if we will just try again?

Again it is Solomon who tells us how we can be of help and encouragement to one another. He says that ”two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour, for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”

Are we conscious of the needs of others and always willing to help them get up again when they fall? Our father-in-law is now 101 years old and he falls frequently. He cannot get up without help once he is down. Are we conscious of the needs of others and anxious to stoop down to help lift up our fallen brethren and sisters?

If the ”Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down,” how conscious we should be of one another and ready to extend our hand to lift up those who are down.

The lesson we need to remember is that we all fall but only failures stay down. Keep on swinging, keep on trying, keep looking to help others when they fall and ”humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”