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It takes ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

Now, I'm finally catching up...even though it's last minute, here is the rest of the story to my student blog this week.

This week while I was teaching social studies we discussed how the inventor of the radio was turned down by his own company when he suggested creating a radio system for home use. He was told that it would never catch on. Can you imagine a life without the radio for personal use?

This got me thinking about other famous people who were initially turned down but later become worldwide success stories. Lucille Ball was dismissed from drama school for being too shy. The Beatles were turned down by a record company because guitar music was supposedly “on the way out.” Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. A teacher once told Thomas Edison he was “too stupid to learn anything” and he should pursue a field in which he could succeed by “virtue of his pleasant attitude.” Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper because he lacked imagination and had no original ideas. J.K. Rowling was turned down by twelve publishers before one agreed to publish Harry Potter. Isn’t that insane? These are names not only in our history books but in our daily language. In some way, every single one of these people is a part of our lives. Can you even think of how different popular culture and our world in general would have been without Thomas Edison? The Beatles? Walt Disney?

What if one of these great people would have given up after the first bump in the road…or in J.K. Rowling’s case, the twelfth? They (or we) would have never known their success, and all they contributed to the world would have been lost. That thought has really resonated in my mind this week. It has reminded me to never give up – no matter how many times someone tells me I can’t do something.

Most importantly, it reminded me that God is ALWAYS in control...and He has the final say in EVERYTHING. God doesn't care about my agenda or your agenda. He knows what is planned for you, and giving up on that plan because you face a little opposition is the last thing that should happen. Colossians 3:23 says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." When we are following God's will and working only for Him and no one else, we cannot fail. Praise God!

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