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outdated before it even started.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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