Be A Champion Today
“A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t.” ~ Jack Dempsey
You’re probably thinking to yourself, “How’s he going to follow up that quote?” If you were thinking that, you’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking? How am I going to follow up that quote? After all, how can you get up if you can’t get up? Hmmm. Let me think about that. Nope. I’ve got nothing. If you can’t get up, you can’t get up. How can you get up if you can’t get up?! Dempsey would answer that question by saying: “By getting up anyway!”
How can that happen? Well, let’s look at Maximilian Kolbe. He was sentenced to death in the concentration camp along with nine other prisoners in retribution for someone who had escaped. He was in an impossible situation. He was to die an ugly, ignoble death. He was, in effect, down and there was no way to get up. But he did nonetheless.
Kolbe led the nine other prisoners in prayer and song up to the point of their deaths. When he was the last person alive and they needed the starvation bunker for more prisoners, he victoriously held out his arm to be injected with carbolic acid. He died — and led the others to die — with incredibly strength and dignity. He got up even when he couldn’t.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta could not possibly feed and clothe the poor or take in all the dying. She had a desire to do so but it was an impossible task. She was down. But she got up anyway. How? As she would say, “By helping one person at a time.” She formed an incredible group of followers who tasked themselves to feed and clothe the poor as well as to bring in the dying so that they could die with love and dignity.
There are many times in our lives when we feel as if we are down and that it is impossible for us to get up again. You know something? That’s the devil talking to us. If we listened closely, we would also hear the voice of Jesus telling us, “You can get up again. Go for it.”
We can. We can rise above our sins and failings. We can rise above the things that bring us down in life. We can rise above the pettiness of those around us who would try to keep us down. We can rise above hatred, envy, racism, and a whole host of other ills affecting our society. They cannot put us down. We can always get back up again with the grace and help of God.
FAITH ACTION: Don’t let frustration and sin keep you down. Get up and fight the good fight again today.