failure on Baseball

“Casey at the Bat” has got to be the most well-known sports poem in American history. The “Mudville nine” are down four to two, with one inning left with two outs. Two men wait at second and third bas...

Remember Aesop’s Fox? Having spied some ripening grapes on a lofty branch, he tried with all his might to jump and take them. Once it dawned on him that he would not—could not—succeed, sulked away, sa...

The genius of the biblical revelation is that it refuses to deny the dark side of things, but forgives failure and integrates falling to achieve its only promised wholeness.

In 2014’s Oscar-winning film Birdman, Michael Keaton plays a washed-out actor trying to start his life again after a series of failed roles. But his efforts are haunted by the voice of the “Birdman,” ...

The Benedictine nun Joan Chittister recounts a story she once heard by a communications professor, which she said fundamentally changed the way she thought about success and failure: A young boy was...

Gerry, a Catholic, went to confession and told the priest he had taken some wood from work. The priest asked, “How much?” Gerry replied, “Not much, Father, just enough to build a garage at the back of...

“I live in my sister’s basement!!!”

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 ar...

In The Last Arrow, Erwin McManus shares the story of Mark Floyd, a businessman who convinced investors to place $20 million dollars in an investment that ultimately failed. Instead of crawling into a ...

Had it not been for a confident wife, Sophia, we might not have listed among the great names of literature the great name of Nathaniel Hawthorne. When Nathaniel, a heartbroken man, went home to tell h...

When he was 7 years old, his family was forced out of their home because of a legal technicality. He had to work to help support them. At age 9, while still a backward, shy little boy, his mother die...

Sisters and brothers, we are so fortunate that the Bible wrote down all the different ways people failed to follow God, because we also get to see how deep God’s fogiveness and love are through those ...

"How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?"

The focus of the author since the beginning chapters of Genesis has been both on God’s plan to bless humankind by providing them with that which is “good” and on the human failure to trust God and enj...

Every day God patiently bears with us, and every day we are tempted to become impatient with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And our faults and failures before God are so much more serious tha...

As a baby, Albert Einstein caused his parents some concern. His head seemed disproportionately large, and he did not start speaking until he was three. As a young man, his career faced setbacks, in...

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery ...

Failure means I dared try.

What are blind spots? They are areas in which people continually fail to see themselves or their situation realistically.

As the darkness began to descend on me in my early twenties, I thought I had developed a unique and terminal case of failure. I did not realize that I had merely embarked on a journey toward joining t...

A young man won admission to college. Instead of writing a letter of congratulations, his father penned this note: Now it is a good thing to put this business very plainly before you. Do not think I...

Young men in his church were expected to pray aloud in Communion Services. So the young Larry Crabb felt pressured to pray, even though he had a problem with stuttering. He remembers offering a terrib...

Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.

In the battle of life, it is not the critic who counts; nor the one who points out how the strong person stumbled, or where the doer of a deed could have done better. The credit belongs to the person ...

So you failed. All right you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I ...

A leader's failure is never isolated, involving only the leader. Usually the failure of a leader involves basic patterns of hiding and blaming throughout the whole organization, patterns that must...

That we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed. That we should not wonder if, in the begin...

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.

Sometimes God takes our greatest failures and turns them into our greatest successes. Charles “Chuck” Colson had risen the ladder of national political success at breakneck speed. After a tour in the ...