《Sermon Illustrations (D~F)》(a compilation) table of contents
Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure
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- DEFENSE
DEFEATDefeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure. B.E. Woodberry. 
Remember Vinko Bogatej? He was a ski-jumper from Yugoslavia who, while competing in the 1970 World Ski-Flying Championship in Obertsdorf, West Germany, fell off the takeoff ramp and landed on his head. Ever since, the accident has been used to highlight "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat" on ABC's "Wide World of Sports." Bogatej was hospitalized after the spill, but he recovered and now works in a foundry in Yugoslavia. Doug Wilson, a producer for ABC, interviewed him last year for a special anniversary edition of the show. "When we told him he's been on the program ever since 1970," says Wilson, "he couldn't believe it. He appears on Television 130 times a year." Thomas Rogers in N.Y. Times, quoted in Reader's Digest, December, 1980.
It was a dark and dreary day in 1916, a day well suited to the most brutally devastating rout in all of football history. One look at the two teams showed trouble ahead. On the Georgia Tech side were semi-human monsters, gorilla-like behemoths trained by John Heisman, the man football's highest award was later named after. Heisman was a fanatic. He would not let his Yellow Jackets use soap or water because he considered them debilitating. Nor could they eat pastry, pork, veal, hot bread, nuts, apples, or coffee. His reason? "They don't agree with me," he growled, "so they'd better not agree with you." The Yellow Jackets, with eight All-Southern players, were intent on building their reputation. They lured lowly Cumberland to the game with a $500 guarantee. The Cumberland team had several players who had never played football before. The official who accepted the offer had long since graduated and left the team in the hands of the team manager. Even the trip to Atlanta had been a disaster: Cumberland arrived with only 16 players. Three were lost at a rest stop in Nashville. The game began. Georgia Tech scored 63 points in the first quarter, averaging touchdowns at one-minute-and-twenty-second intervals. Even after such a lopsided start, the rest of the game was filled with tension and drama! No one questioned who would win, of course. But could Cumberland players be convinced to finish the game? The manager, George Allen, paced the sidelines, exhorting the team to "hang in there for Cumberland's $500." They did, and with it collected the honor of the worst loss in college football history: 222-0. Cumberland also left posterity one of its most memorable football plays. A Cumberland kickoff returner fumbled, probably from sheer weariness. He yelled to a teammate, "Pick up the ball!" Replied his teammate, "Pick it up yourself! You dropped it!" Source Unknown. DEFENSEThe Great Wall of China is a gigantic structure which cost an immense amount of money and labor. When it was finished, it appeared impregnable. But the enemy breached it. Not by breaking it down or going around it. They did it by bribing the gatekeepers. Harry Emerson Fosdick. DELAYDr. George Sweeting wrote in Special Sermons for Special Days: "Several years ago our family visited Niagara Falls. It was spring, and ice was rushing down the river. As I viewed the large blocks of ice flowing toward the falls, I could see that there were carcasses of dead fish embedded in the ice. Gulls by the score were riding down the river feeding on the fish. As they came to the brink of the falls, their wings would go out, and they would escape from the falls. "I watched one gull which seemed to delay and wondered when it would leave. It was engrossed in the carcass of a fish, and when it finally came to the brink of the falls, out went its powerful wings. The bird flapped and flapped and even lifed the ice out of the water, and I thought it would escape. But it had delayed too long so that its claws had frozen into the ice. The weight of the ice was too great, and the gull plunged into the abyss." The finest attractions of this world become deadly when we become overly attached to them. They may take us to our destruction if we cannot give them up. And as Sweeting observed, "Oh, the danger of delay!" Dr. George Sweeting, Special Sermons for Special Days.
The cost of not putting a finger in the dike: For most of the last decade, Chicagoans who worked in the Loop, the booming downtown business district, could easily ignore the city's budget crisis; Washington's cutback of aid to cities didn't seem to hurt business. Last week, they learned one price of neglecting the underpinnings of all that economic growth. A quarter billion gallons of murky Chicago River water gushed into a 60-mile network of turn-of-the-century freight tunnels under the Loop and brought nearly all businesses to a soggy halt. It turned out that a top city official had known about the leak, but, acting for a cash-strapped government, had delayed repairs costing only about $50,000. The final cost of the damage could run higher than $1 billion. U.S. News & World Report, April 27, 1992.
The lesson of Munich was: When it is necessary to confront an expansionist dictator, sooner is better than later. As Douglas MacArthur said, in war all tragedy can be summarized in two words, "too late." Too late perceiving, too late preparing for danger. George Will, August 5, 1990. Directory: Topics Topics -> ES18 topics intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) Working Group I Topics -> Non-Governmental Organizations And Their Relation to Transboundary Water Resources Topics -> United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Mandatory hiv testing August 1996 Topics -> Policy Options for Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion Download 1.31 Mb. Share with your friends:
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