Hard Knocks

Life is an education.  Each of us has been enrolled into the School of Hard Knocks.  You have probably already been through several courses by now.  You've probably noticed that the grading system is pass/fail.  We either advance upward or we are held back by each experience.  

The lessons we are given will have an outcome that either further equipps us for life or mires us down in it.  The same lesson can have either effect.  Some people will be given a lemon and make lemonaide, others will become soured by the experience.  It isn't the lessons themselves but, rather, how we deal with them.

Listen to the apostle Paul talk about attendance in the School of Hard Knocks in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."

If you know his life story, you know he faced more and greater adversity than most can even imagine, but he was not held back or pushed down by the losses and the pain.  He was injured but not paralyzed, he continued moving onward and upward.

The reason?  Paul always moved forward, not because of his great abilities but because of his unmoved focus (vv. 16-18): "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

I once read, regarding concentration camp survivors, "Man can deal with almost any what as long as he knows the why."  Not particularly why this is happening but why I should press on.  I press on for my family, for my country, for my dream - and the greatest why is, "I press on for the glory of heaven."  Jus' Sayn.