Persistence in Blogging and in Life

You've probably heard this quote from Calvin Coolidge:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

I'm not sure about omnipotent, but we get the point.

About what are you persevering in your life right now?

And what motivates you to get up out of bed and do the same thing day after tedious day?

When it comes to blogging, it's ambition that drives me. At age 56, I want to leave a tangible legacy of useful things behind me that will continue to be useful when I'm gone.

I want to write hymns and songs that people somewhere will sing.

I want to write several books that will be read by more than eight people, books that will not gather dust on the shelves.

Yesterday I told my friend Jon Switzer that it was vanity which caused me to persist in getting up every morning to write a daily blog, and vanity that drove me to work at hymn-writing. But whatever one calls it, Jon didn't think it was a bad thing. We talked about Jesus's statement "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (Mark 9:35) Jesus didn't condemn the desire to be great, but he said, more or less, "If you want to do that, here is the way; be the servant of everybody. Do something helpful, sometime useful, and have a humble spirit about it."

So that's what I'm trying to do. 

I still want to be great, and sometimes it doesn't even feel like self-centeredness that's at work in me.

And I remember old Charles Wesley, who wrote about 5000 hymns, 50 of them surviving for 250 years now.

So if I write 300 hymns a year for 15 years........................(smile)