In Proverbs 24:16, Solomon said:
“Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity.”
I love this text. It has instructed me many times in life. Notice from this text that both the righteous and evil man falls, the difference between the righteous and evil is whether they get up from their fall.
The righteous man, the good man, falls but gets up. The wicked man falls down and just wallows in his failure.
A man named Harlan illustrates this. He was a sixth-grade dropout. Over his life, He worked as a farmhand, a railroad worker, an insurance salesman, a tire salesman, and had a failed attempt in politics. At the end of all these jobs, he retired broke. With little more than social security checks, he decided to sell chicken, more specifically, a chicken recipe. He went from business to business asking restaurants, cafes, and grills to use his recipe and pay him 5 cents for each piece they sold. He tried for two years. “No, no, no,” he kept hearing. In fact, he heard 1,009 rejections before someone finally said “Yes.”
We all know him now as Colonel Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. When he died in 1980, he was a rich man, a millionaire. He failed 1,009 times, but he tried and tried again.
Winners keep on keeping on. Losers quit!
I’m Lonnie Davis, and these are thoughts worth thinking.