Keep Getting Up Again and AGAIN!

Paul Harvey, the beloved radio broadcaster who chronicled mysterious “rest of the stories” for America with his nationally syndicated program, shared this sad but true account of “Sparky”:

            WHEN HE WAS a little boy the other children called him, “Sparky,” after a comic-strip horse named Sparkplug. Sparky never did shake that nickname.

            School was all but impossible for Sparky. He failed every subject in the eighth grade. Every subject! He flunked physics in high school. Receiving a flat zero in the course, he distinguished himself as the worst physics student in his school’s history.

            He also flunked Latin. And algebra. And English.

            He didn’t do much better in sports. Although he managed to make the school golf team, he promptly lost the only important match of the year.

            There was a consolation match. Sparky lost that too.

            Throughout his youth Sparky was awkward socially. He was not actually disliked by the other youngsters. No one cared that much. He was astonished if a classmate ever said hello to him outside school hours …

            Sparky was a loser. He, his classmates, everyone knew it …   

            But this is THE REST OF THE STORY.

            … He was proud of his own artwork. Of course, no one else appreciated it. In his senior year of high school, he submitted some cartoons to the editors of his class yearbook. Almost predictably Sparky’s drawings were rejected …

            Upon graduating high school, he wrote a letter to Walt Disney Studios, a letter indicating his qualifications to become a cartoonist for Disney.

            Shortly he received an answer, a form letter requesting that he send some examples of his artwork. Subject matter was suggested. For instance, a Disney cartoon character “repairing” a clock by shoveling the springs and gears back inside.

            Sparky drew the proposed cartoon scene. He spent a great deal of time on that and the other drawings. A job with Disney would be impressive, and there were many doubters to impress.

            Sparky mailed the form and his drawings to Disney Studios.

            Sparky waited.

            And one day the reply came ....

            It was another form letter, very politely composed. It said that Disney Studios hired only the very finest artists, even for their routine background work. It had been determined from the drawings which Sparky had submitted—that he was not one of the very finest artists.

            In other words, he did not get the job.

            I think deep down Sparky expected to be rejected. He had always been a loser, and this was simply one more loss.^[1]

Now, wouldn’t you imagine Sparky would have stopped trying?  Given up on his one dream to avoid any more heart-breaking disappointment!?  You’ll get the rest of the rest of his story in a moment.  But for now, know this: he didn’t stay down for the count.  Though he kept getting kicked in the gut he kept getting up until he finally rose up and stayed on his feet.  Christians can and should do the same in Christ as He guides and motivates with Proverbs 24:16, which reads:

For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again …

In its context, this Scripture teaches that though the wicked seek to knock out the righteous, the righteous always rise up in victory. 

The first part of the verse highlights “seven” rounds nearing knockout, a Biblical number signifying perfect completion.^[2]  The righteous lasts the length of the fight.  He rises up from the mat and takes more punches on the chin.

The “righteous” one is the person trusting in God’s righteousness through “the LORD Our Righteousness” and seeks to live for Him righteously in return.  He fails and falls but he never quits on Christ or himself.  He often can be his own worst enemy, but he keeps killing his old man and putting on more of the new.  He faces constant pummeling from relentless worldly assaults and spiritual attacks by the Accuser.  Yet he keeps rising. They can’t kill him.  And they can’t kill his spirit, which is lifted up by Psalm 37:23-24, 28:

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.  Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand …  For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever …^[3]

Christian, in the righteousness of Christ, rest assured with Job 5:19 that He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.^[4]  A person’s strength is seen in his or her ability to endure under distress.  Falling is not failure—staying down is.

The righteous doesn’t give in to his fear to not risk falling; in fact, he faces it as inevitable from the start, for the verse literally begins in the Hebrew with this word order: “For seven times falleth the just one and standeth …”

Like Jim Kelly.  “Kelly Tough” has been the life theme of this famed quarterback of the Buffalo Bills’ Super Bowl years.^[5]  For no matter what, he kept getting up—it is how he was raised.  And so he incessantly rose.  Such as through an incredible rehabilitation from a horrendous shoulder injury that ended his senior year in college and still being selected early in the first round of the NFL draft.  And when violently tackled into fumbling during his first game in the Queen City, he jumped to his feet and raced down the opponent who hit him and ran with the ball just before he scored a defensive touchdown.  Or enduring four straight Super Bowl losses going back for more each season and now positively defending the uniqueness of what his team accomplished against the mockery of what they didn’t.  Such as learning how to deal with the fatal birth defect that took his first child and only son early in life (though he lived much longer than expected, a chip off the old block) and starting a foundation to raise funds to help others impacted by the disease.  And his repenting and repairing his marriage to regain the respect of his wife and daughters.  Such as his surviving years of surgeries and treatments for cancer that began in his upper gum line and spread to his facial nerves into his jaw then under his eye and close to his brain while not letting its speech impediment symptoms keep him from being a public NFL figure and commentator.  And now, he’s gotten himself up to the point where he expresses a sense that God had all these things knock him down to prepare him to help others get back on their feet and keep walking. 

Kelly’s Super Bowl era coach, Marv Levy, gave this inspiration to his resilient, relentless team:

Adversity is the opportunity for heroism.

Or as Albert Einstein put it:

In the middle of every difficulty, lies opportunity.

You can look at things incorrectly lying down.  See things like Sparky who kept standing up again and again.  And now for the rest of the story from Paul Harvey about that child cruelly nicknamed after a comic strip horse.

            So you know what Sparky did? He wrote his autobiography in cartoons.  He described his childhood self, the little-boy loser, the chronic underachiever, in a cartoon character the whole world now knows.

            For the boy who failed the entire eighth grade, the young artist whose work was rejected not only by Walt Disney Studios but his own high school yearbook, that young man was Charles Monroe Schulz.

            He created the “Peanuts” comic strip and the little cartoon boy whose kite would never fly—Charlie Brown.^[6]

Mr. Schulz left us the beloved stories that grace our televisions and warm our hearts most every holiday.  And he not only gave us Charlie Brown—but Snoopy!

That’s the rest of the rest of his story.  How will your story be told?

Dear Christians, you will ultimately get up once and for all at the resurrection in Christ Who is the Resurrection and the Life: and never will you ever be knocked down again! 

Until then, keep getting up.  So that when you lie down your last time before rising up for eternity at the Last Great Day, you can say the words of Paul in 2 Timothy 4:7: I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.  Never give up.  And keep getting up again and AGAIN!^[7]

Grant Van Leuven has been feeding the flock at the Puritan Reformed Presbyterian Church in San Diego, CA, since 2010.  A bi-vocational pastor, he also serves as Site Manager of the San Diego office for World Relief Southern California.  Grant and his wife, Fernanda, have eight covenant children.  He earned his M.Div. at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA.