Opportunity

Twenty nine years ago the US Olympic Hockey Team, a group of college kids, came from behind to defeat the Russian team (the best hockey team in the world at the time). This was one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. Even now I get chills when I think of it. No one at the time believed those kids had a chance to win that game. Well almost no one--their coach told them that they could win and they must have believed him because they played that game as though they were the better team. They had an opportunity to make history and that is just what they did.

Life presents us all with many great opportunities and what we do with our opportunities determines what happens in our lives. Please take a minute to read and digest the words to this great old poem and let it's wisdom permeate your life.

Opportunity
By Walter Malone (1866-1915)

They do me wrong who say I come no more.
When once I knock and fail to find you in;
For every day I stand outside your door,
And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.

Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane!
Each night I burn the records of the day-
At sunrise every soul is born again!

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgements seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.

Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
I lend my arm to all who say "I Can!"
No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep,
But yet might rise and be again a man.

Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous Retribution's blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past,
And find the future's pages white as snow.

Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell;
Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven;
Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,
Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven.