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Legend Never Did

 


  I’m sure you have heard of the Pony Express. It is the stuff of American myth and legend. The Pony Express was a series of eighty riders and five hundred horses galloping thousands of miles across the Western plains. Riders battled Indians, bandits, and natural hazards to deliver letters from Missouri to California in just ten days.  The stuff of legends.

  In reality, however, it was a total failure. The Pony Express went bankrupt in a little more than a year and cost it’s investors a quarter of million dollars. It was dangerous, even deadly, to both riders and horses.  The service was forced to use child labor as riders had to weigh less than 125 lbs.  To send a message was expensive, a half-ounce letter cost $5 to mail (about $90 in today’s money). The worst part was it was outdated before it even started. When the transcontinental telegraph was completed the Pony Express was gone in two months.

  Yet it became an American legend. 

 We often romanticize things that are not really all that good. Sin is lauded as a natural action or a necessary function. We convince ourselves our hectic lifestyle are what proves our value to the world since we are so needed. We lust after wealth and fame, even when we see time and time again how much they disappoint.

There was a certain man without a dependent, having neither a son nor a brother, yet there was no end to all his labor. Indeed, his eyes were not satisfied with riches and he never asked, "And for whom am I laboring and depriving myself of pleasure?" This too is vanity and it is a grievous task.

Ecclesiastes 4:8 

  Right now is there something in your life that you think is wonderful but isn’t. Something we never stop to think, “Is this really worth it”? An endeavor you might be spending your time and energy and resources on that is already doomed to fail?. Something that costs you greatly yet doesn’t reward much? Something that causes you to do things that you know are not right for a result that isn’t going to be worth it?

 Don’t accept the myth over reality. Don’t lose everything on something that isn’t worth anything.

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