Difficulties and Discouragements

John Milton lost one eye, and then the second one too, but he didn’t lose heart. Instead he produced some of the world's greatest poetry. His blindness was an opportunity to stimulate his verbal richness.

Helen Keller was deaf, dumb and blind since childhood. But she never thought of herself as handicapped. Her positive attitude in her world of darkness brought light to others and transformed every difficulty into an opportunity to overcome.

Socrates was ugly and uneducated. But his thoughts were always lofty, his attitude always positive. His wife would always find faults with him but he never let a sense of defeat overpower him. Once finding his wife extremely angry, he sat on a stone slab near his gate and started basking in the sun. When the angry woman rushed out and emptied a pitcher of cold water over his head, he praised his wife instead of retaliating: "I was wondering dear, why after thundering it hadn't rained yet!" Such a peaceful bent of mind gave him the opportunity to be the number one philosopher in the world.

Abraham Lincoln was the son of a poor farmer who could never afford to buy books and clothes for him. But Lincoln had a positive attitude about life. He would wash his only suit at night so that it would dry by the morning. Covering himself with a rough towel he would study the books borrowed from his friends under the street lamp as there was no light in his own house. One day an envious neighbor made a taunting remark to Lincoln: "Why study in the mosquito-ridden street at night! After all you are not going to become the President of America?" Lincoln took it as a positive challenge and one day occupied the White House as President.

Difficulties and discouragements are often merely a rung on the ladder of life. Where you stand on the ladder of life is not as important as how many rungs you have persistently climbed and the character you have developed in the journey!

Have you allowed difficulties and discouragements to prevent you from reaching God's purpose for your life?