Good Monday Morning, Dear Friends,
Alongside the Forum in Rome, there is a narrow stairway leading down to a dark and dingy room chiseled out of limestone. In that room there are no windows. There is an iron bed, a small table, and a hard chair. There are chains anchored in the wall with leg irons attached. Here, it is said, a man named Paul spent his last days. Imagine, if you can, Paul sitting at the rough table with a small lamp flickering near his cold hands. He had come to Rome on a great mission, but strange events had conspired to place him in jail. The Romans had silenced his voice, but they had not stilled his pen. Paul couldn’t speak, but he could write. He wrote, and his writings have become immortal. They constitute a major portion of the most important book in the world — the New Testament. From that faraway day, the apostle Pau’s life speaks to us: “It’s fatal to nurse injuries from the past. It’s better to forget and go on to what’s still left to do.”
In 1980, an American president suffered one of the worst political defeats in history. Bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency, Carter lost the election receiving only 49 electoral college votes to Ronald Reagan’s 489. Jimmy Carter was a colossal failure in the eyes of millions. But with quiet dignity Carter forgot the past and moved beyond the blame, beyond defeat and with grace and poise entered new fields of service and duty. By the sheer greatness of his spirit, he began to regain the respect of his fellow Americans. His work with Habitat for Humanity won again for him the admiration of many who in earlier days had rejected him as a failure.
The past, with its failures, its defeats, and unobtained goals, can tyrannize us. The oppression can be so brutal that the present seems useless and the future hopeless. But the lives of great people remind us that defeat is not falling down; it is staying down. No one who says, “I will try again” is ever a failure.
The people who find life the most rewarding are those who never allow past achievements to lure them into complacency. They also refuse to let hurts and injustices dampen their spirits. And most of all, they put aside their failures and stand to try again.
Remember, ours is the God of the second chance,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
