Living Daily

By Rev. Dr. Dale Turner

From Different Seasons: Twelve Months of Wisdom & Inspiration

Principal L. P. Jacks, the noted English philosopher, described every human heart as an arena where a hero and a coward wage a continuous conflict for the mastery of each personality. Upon the outcome of the struggle between the hero and the coward hinges our self-respect, out usefulness, and our happiness.

It is no sham battle. Because the struggle is both universal and life-long, with first one side of us then the other the victor, there are very few perfect heroes and heroines, and very few absolute cowards. Successful living pivots on courage.

Courage is the ability to act effectively in the face of danger or difficulty. It involves both purpose and knowledge of danger. The deepest courage is revealed when a person looks straight at danger or hardship and is not turned aside by it.

Those who do a dangerous thing in response to a dare or in order to prove that they are not afraid are reckless and foolhardy rather than courageous. A courageous person takes chances for the sake of an important cause. Courage is often confused with the absence of fear. But there is no such thing as courage without fear.

We read of courageous people who return to burning houses in an effort to save a life or leap into churning waters to save someone from drowning. Most of us have few opportunities, if any, to demonstrate courage or cowardice in such dramatic ways. It is usually in some less spectacular manner that courage or cowardice comes to the fore.

Many people need courage to meet the challenge of routine—the drudgery of life. It is often easier to “mount up with wings like eagles” than it is to “walk and not faint.” Life can become very daily, and it is not easy to glorify the grind. The test of a man’s or woman’s courage is the way he or she faces and deals with sameness.

Anyone can die, but it often takes greater courage just to live. It takes courage for a teacher or student to study day in and day out, for a secretary to see romance in typing weeks on end. Cooking meals and washing dishes each day cannot easily be called an exhilarating exercise. And we can give a chuckle at the cartoon of a mother standing in a toy-strewn room, trying to separate two scrapping children while dinner boils over on the stove, lifting her head to heaven as she cries, “Sometimes I wish that I had loved and lost.”

People who tackle life’s relentless chores with bravery make a constructive contribution to their own lives and to the lives of those about them.

Neither fame, nor place, nor wealth can safeguard us from our share of dreams that don’t come true or the death of those we love.

Life’s real heroes and heroines are not the entertainers on stage and screen, or the athletes who dazzle crowds with their skills. Rather, they are those who have taken life’s losses in stride. They prevail. They rest their faith in the God of the psalmist: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”