Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Success comes through failure

Accord­ing to a Chinese pro­verb, “fail­ure is not fall­ing down but refus­ing to get up.” Again, I agree with Nel­son Man­dela when he said, “do not judge me by my suc­cesses, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” Some people are afraid of fail­ure and there­fore, of fall­ing, hence, they do not attempt. On the oth­er hand, oth­ers give up at the slight­est set-back. These people are not aware that fail­ure is suc­cess sealed. Suc­cess is the oth­er side of the coin. If in Mat­thew chapter 10 the dis­ciples were asked to lim­it their mis­sion to the lost sheep of Israel, with the epis­ode of this Sunday Gos­pel (Matt 15:21–28), Jesus indic­ates to the dis­ciples and to every believ­er that it is he who is to inaug­ur­ate the mis­sion to the Gen­tiles. Take a closer look at the con­ver­sa­tion between Jesus and the Canaan­ite woman. At her request, Jesus ignored her and pre­ten­ded he nev­er heard her. As if this was not enough, he iron­ic­ally told her that he is not allowed to min­is­ter to her. Finally, he sum­mar­ised his pre­sumed indif­fer­ence to the woman with a pro­voca­tion, mak­ing a dis­tinc­tion between the woman/Gentiles (dogs) and the Israel­ites (chil­dren). But in all, the woman did not give up, she con­tin­ued to per­severe. Today, Chris­ti­ans engage in reli­gious pros­ti­tu­tion because they think God is delay­ing in exhaust­ing their request. Too bad!

Conclusion

Dear read­er, per­sever­ance is per­sist­ent determ­in­a­tion. It is per­sist­ence in any­thing under­taken. It is also the refus­al to stop. Theo­lo­gic­ally, per­sever­ance is con­tinu­ance in a state of grace until it is suc­ceeded by a state of glory. Des­pite the dif­fi­culties and the oppos­i­tions, he encountered, Jesus per­sisted and refused to stop until the mis­sion entrus­ted unto him by God was ful­filled. Regard­less of the seem­ingly pro­voca­tion and insult, the Canaan­ite woman refused to stop plead­ing for help. She per­sisted until Jesus hearkened to her request. In like man­ner, we should not be frightened by failure.…..

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPY OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vol. I)!! The reflec­tion for the 20^th Sunday is found on pages 409–414. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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