Finding Our Strength

"You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later." (CS Lewis). CS Lewis says that if we lie down after five minutes we won't know how strong the wind would be in an hour, but just as important, we wouldn't know how strong we were in an hour. It is tempting and incredibly easy to lose one's cool, to give up, go home and quit. But the longer that we hold out, the more patience we have in the face of even the most trying of circumstances, the stronger and wiser and deeper we will find ourselves to be. The world is hard and there will always be lots of opportunities to give up and quit. But lying down makes us weaker, while walking into the fierce wind makes us stronger. It's hard being weak and even harder trying to be strong, but having the patience to endure, while a hard thing to do, nevertheless leads us to become stronger. It is better to suffer and build our strength than to suffer and give up our strength.