“For everything that was written in the past was written
to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures
and the encouragement they provide we might have hope”
(Romans 15:4).
The Author of the Word accompanies us through the writings so that we might have hope. Patience and perseverance are indispensable. Patience is not only a passive resignation; it is also an active virtue, a courageous perseverance and persistence that is not moved by fear of evil or danger.
The term “perseverance” means “constancy” and “tenacity, ” and refers to the ability to begin and continue resolutely despite difficulties and impediments. Someone is persevering when strives to reach a goal at all costs.
“The effective way to hit the nail once is to hit the horseshoe
a hundred times” (Miguel de Unamuno).
“Permanence, perseverance, and persistence despite all obstacles,
discouragement, and impossibility are what distinguish
the strong soul from the weak” (Thomas Carlyle).
Thomas Alva Edison was the inventor of the electric light bulb. We cannot deny that he had a brilliant mind, to the point that he patented more than 1,300 inventions, including the telegraph, the carbon microphone, the nickle-iron battery, the mimeograph machine, and the Dictaphone. However, nothing was easy for him. He needed a lot of patience and perseverance. At the age of eight, he began school, and only three months later, his mother had to take him out as he was considered unproductive and having a certain degree of mental delay. At the age of twelve, he began working as a newspaper salesman. Edison tested at least three hundred theories to develop an effecient incandescent lamp.
The scientist tried hundreds upon hundreds of other materials to create the filament, including the fibres of about six thousand different plants. Perseverance had its reward in 1880, when he obtained a sixteen-watt high-strenght incandescent lamp which lasted up to 1,500 hours. When he told the world the process he had used to achieve it, he said,
“It was not a thousand failed attempts; it was an invention of a thousand steps.”
Jesus Himself showed us the way with His own life, for only “he who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13).
“The elements of character that make a man successful and honored among men
– the irrepressibe desire for some greater good, the indomitable will,
the strenuous exertion, the untiring perseverance – will not be
crushed out. By the grace of God they will be directed to objects
as much higher than mere selfish and temporal interests as the heavens
are higher than the earth” (Counsels to Parents, and Students, p. 21).
God bless you, be perserverant!