Mistakes

A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a fifty dollar bill. In a room of about two hundred people, he asked, "who would like this fifty-dollar bill?" Hands started going up. He said, " I am going to give it to one of you, but first let me do this." He proceeded to crumple the bill up and then asked, "who still wants it?" Still the hands were up in the air.

"Well," he replied, "what if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty.

"Now who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air.
"My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth fifty dollars."

Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, we will never lose our value in God's eyes. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, we are still priceless to Him.

Author and speaker John C. Maxwell says that mistakes are:

Messages that give us feedback about life.
Interupptions that should cause us to reflect and think.
Signposts that direct us to the right path.
Tests that push us toward greater maturity.
Awakenings that keep us in the game mentally.
Keys that we can use to unlock the next door of opportunity.
Explorations that let us journey where we've never gone before.
Statements about our development and progress.