A thought by Ray Johnston (2014-05-13) from his book, The Hope Quotient: Measure It. Raise It. You'll Never Be the Same. (p.139). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
This is such a good principle. It has held me steady all through my life. Oh, I whine around for a moment but not for very long. What about you?
Ray says, “If you do that, you’ll have a future. If you do that, your family will have a future. If you do that, your kids will have a future. If you do that, your church will have a future. If enough people do that, their country could have a brighter future. No one is going to do well over a decade if they don’t respond to bad news in great ways.”
Ray goes on, “The great American inventor Thomas Edison started more than one hundred companies before the age of forty and held more than one thousand patents that changed the way the world works. His inventions of the incandescent lightbulb, the phonograph, and a viable motion picture system continue to shape our planet today. He lived by a set of core principles, among them a determination to never give up.
“That determination got severely tested on December 9, 1914, when an explosion and fire leveled his corporate campus in West Orange, New Jersey. ‘Edison Sees His Vast Plan Burn,’ shouted the headline in the New York Times. Edison was there when the fire started and directed efforts to save as much as possible, but the loss amounted to about $ 7 million, which would be well over $ 100 million today.
“‘Although I am over 67 years old,’ he told a Times reporter, ‘I’ll start all over again tomorrow. I am pretty well burned out tonight, but tomorrow there will be a mobilization here and the debris will be cleared away, if it is cooled sufficiently, and I will go right to work to reconstruct the plant.’
“Edison’s determination was all the more remarkable because he made the statement in the middle of the disaster, according to the reporter, ‘as he watched the flames destroy building after building.’
“Sometime after the catastrophe, Edison declared, ‘There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.’
“And start anew he did. During the fire, Edison noted how the loss of power and light had hampered firefighters, so he designed a portable, battery-powered searchlight with a three-million-candlepower beam. Within six months, he demonstrated his invention to astonished visitors at a nearby park.”
Ray then says, “When you respond to bad news in great ways, who knows what the future might hold?”
Yes, who knows what your future might hold?
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