“Never Give Up”

AT BIRTH, Wilma Rudolph was tiny and sickly. She was four before she started to walk. Then she became seriously ill with scarlet fever and pneumonia. Although she survived, her left leg suffered paralysis. Determined that Wilma would walk, her mother massaged her wasted leg and taught three of her older children to do the same. So there were four daily shifts of “rubbing Wilma.”

When Wilma was eight, she was able to walk with a leg brace. Soon she was running and playing. She was determined to overcome her disability. Exercise helped her, and so did her mother’s advice: “Never give up.”

Wilma didn’t. And in 1960, at the Olympics in Rome, Italy, she received three gold medals. She won the 100- and 200-meter foot races and came in first in the final leg of the 400-meter relay.

During the first world war, when he was a boy of seven, Glenn Cunningham suffered life-threatening burns to his legs. He spent months in bed and was told that he might never walk again. His mother daily kneaded his damaged muscles and urged him to walk and then run. Glenn did not give up. In fact, he eventually won 21 of 31 mile races on the indoor track at Madison Square Garden. And, in 1934, he set a world record for the mile run.

Sometime in life all of us face setbacks of one kind or another. Often it is some health problem. Instead of being resigned to defeat, how fine to be determined not to give up! “We do not give up,” wrote the apostle Paul in connection with spiritual efforts. “Even if the man we are outside [our physical body] is wasting away, certainly the man we are inside is being renewed [or given fresh strength] from day to day.”​—2 Corinthians 4:16.

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UPI/​Bettmann Newsphotos