Are You More Like an Egg or a Tennis Ball?
Daniel Hope
You may have had the unpleasant experience of learning first-hand what an egg does when it hits the floor. It busts. A tennis ball, on the other hand, bounces back up when it hits the ground. But eggs and tennis balls are not the only things that fall.
Occasionally you and I fall. In fact, there is not a single person reading this article that has never made a mistake—who has never fallen. The difference between people is the way they react to falling. Some people bust, while other people bounce back.
The Secret to Success in Life
Successful people in life are the ones who are able to bounce back from failure. General George Patton once stated, "Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom." When asked the secret to his success, Paul Harvey responded, "I get up when I fall down." Basically, success is getting up one more time than you fall down. I’m sure the following people would agree with me:
Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold medal in the 1992 Winter Olympics after falling down in the middle of one of her routines.
Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, got cut from his high school basketball team and missed 9,000 shots in his NBA career, 26 of which lost the game for his team.
Abraham Lincoln, this country’s most popular president, lost 8 elections, failed in business twice, and had a nervous breakdown.
Walt Disney got fired from a newspaper for lack of ideas.
Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times in his career.
Henry Ford went broke 5 times prior to his "Model T."
Just think of all of light bulbs Thomas Edison blew up before he found one that actually stayed lit!
The Secret to Success in the Christian Life
Much like these successful individuals, those who are successful in living the Christians life are the people who get up when they fall down. For example, consider Judas and Peter. Judas was overcome with grief and took his own life after he betrayed his Lord. Peter, though, went on to become a great leader in the early church after he denied Jesus. What was the difference between these two men? Why was one a failure and the other a success? It wasn’t that one fell and the other didn’t. It was that one got back up while the other one stayed down. When Judas fell he busted like an egg. But Peter responded to his fall like a tennis ball…he bounced back.
Peter wasn’t the only successful Christian who had a history of failure. The Apostle Paul was far from perfect himself. In fact, Paul felt that his name should be at the top of the list of the "World’s Worst Sinners of All Time" (1 Tim. 1:15). Yet, we can’t imagine a more successful Christian than Paul, because Paul knew the secret to success. We find the secret to Paul’s success in this statement he made in Philippians 3:13-14: "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." What was his secret? He got up when he fell down!
And his life teaches us that a sinful past can be the black velvet on which the diamond of God’s forgiving grace is displayed. Never forget: grace is greater than guilt. Forgiveness is greater than failure. We can get up because God will help us up. We can overcome our past because Christ will forgive us of our past.
It was Paul who warned the Corinthian Christians, "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Cor. 10:12). Let’s also remember the other side of that coin: "Let him who has fallen take heed lest he not stand back up."
The next time you fall, bounce back up like a tennis ball!