Patience – Persistence – Pursuit

We finally get to talk about 3 subjects I know very little about.  Or, should I say 3 subjects that I have not yet mastered.  Why would someone want to talk about something they are not expert in?  Good question, but it has never stopped me before, so here we go…

Patience is not an easy word.  For one thing patience doesn’t come as a neatly packaged gift ready to be opened and put to work immediately.  It’s a bit more complicated than that.  Patience is gained through trial, and tribulation.  In other words, hard times, unpleasant times, times we’d rather skip over.

Persistence is an interesting word.  It speaks of a certain stubbornness, unwillingness to give up, the ability to keep going when everyone else says its time to quit.  Persistence in some matters may be the only thing that can turn certain failure into success.  Persistence may trump wealth, brilliance, strength, and other attributes.

Pursuit is a daring word.  Pursuit implies stepping out, taking a risk, and doing something.  Pursuit involves effort, work, and sometimes danger, with no certainty of the outcome.  Pursuit requires one to step up, and to sometimes fail.  Pursuit is an action word, not filled with flowery prose or promises.

Patience, persistence, and pursuit are brothers, and work together towards a common purpose.  They don’t always win the battles, but they will win the war.  If we look at the antonyms for these words it tells us what we don’t want to be:

Patience – Impatience.  Unwillingness to give God time to work out a solution.  A lack of faith that God knows what time it is.

Persistence – I tried once, and that is enough.  If it doesn’t work the first time I’m through with it.  I will never do that again.  I simply can’t do it.

Pursuit – I won’t go.  Too much danger, too much risk.  Not only that it takes too much work.  And even if I pursue my goal and get there, what guarantee will there be that I’ll receive my just reward?  The road is not clear, the path seems uncertain, and there are bound to be pitfalls, I think it safer to stay home and watch another episode of Golden Girls.  Better yet, let someone else do it.

Teddy Roosevelt said it better than I can say it….

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt