"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:33). Ambition is not the enemy of faith. The question is what we are ambitious for, and whether we are willing to settle for less than the real thing.
These three stories about ambition, retold in our own words, follow a child prodigy who refused a toy violin, a young entrepreneur who asked a soft-drinks executive one unforgettable question, and a struggling actor who turned down a fortune to keep hold of his dream. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons or reflection.
Stories in this collection:
- I Want Nothing to Do With It: Yehudi Menuhin and the Toy Violin
- Stop Selling Sugared Water: Steve Jobs and John Sculley
- Sylvester Stallone's Amazing Story: The Script He Would Not Sell
I Want Nothing to Do With It: Yehudi Menuhin and the Toy Violin
Yehudi Menuhin became one of the most celebrated violinists and conductors of the twentieth century, holding audiences spellbound around the world. Like many great musicians, he showed his gift astonishingly early. He made his solo debut with the San Francisco Symphony at the age of seven, and at eleven he played the Beethoven Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall with the New York Symphony, according to the Kennedy Center's biography.
In his memoir, Unfinished Journey, Menuhin told the story of how his lifelong love affair with the violin began.
From the age of about three, his parents regularly took him to orchestral concerts. There he heard the violinist Louis Persinger, the orchestra's concertmaster. Whenever Persinger rose into a solo passage, little Yehudi, sitting with his parents high up in the gallery, was completely enchanted. The sound seemed to reach straight into him.
"During one such performance," Menuhin later wrote, "I asked my parents if I might have a violin for my fourth birthday and Louis Persinger to teach me to play it."
It seemed his wish had been granted. A friend of the family gave the little boy a violin. But when Yehudi looked at it, his face fell. It was a toy, made of metal, with metal strings.
He was only four years old. He could hardly have had the arms or fingers to do justice to a full-sized instrument, and any adult might have thought the toy was a sensible first step. But Yehudi was furious. "I burst into sobs, threw it on the ground and would have nothing to do with it," he remembered.
Looking back years later, Menuhin understood why he had reacted so fiercely. He did not want something that looked like a violin. He wanted the real thing, because, as he put it, "I did know instinctively that to play was to be." Playing the violin was not a hobby to him, even at four. It was who he was.
Takeaway: Discover who you are and what your whole being is drawn to. Do not settle for a toy version of your calling. Once you know what you were made for, give yourself to it: practise, persevere, and grow into it with all your strength.
Source: Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, quoting Yehudi Menuhin, Unfinished Journey. Career dates checked against the Kennedy Center biography.
Stop Selling Sugared Water: Steve Jobs and John Sculley
Who among us could live without computers now? They are everywhere: in our homes, on our desks at work, in libraries, banks and cafes, and in our pockets. We enjoy them, we grumble at them, and we depend on them.
Yet it was not long ago that almost nobody imagined this. A line often attributed to IBM's Thomas J. Watson, that there was "a world market for maybe five computers", is almost certainly a myth: there is scant evidence he ever said it. But the doubt was real. In 1977, Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said there was "no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home". Olsen later explained he was talking about computers that ran the household, not personal computers, but the line stuck because it captured how strange the idea of a home computer still seemed.
Much of the change came from two young men named Steve. Before them, computers were huge machines that filled whole rooms. Steve Wozniak designed a computer small enough to sit on a desk, and Steve Jobs saw what it could become.
They tried to hand their idea to the big companies first. All they really wanted was a salary and the chance to keep working on it. Wozniak, who worked at Hewlett-Packard, offered the design to his employer, and HP turned it down five times. It seemed that only Jobs and Wozniak could see the possibilities.
So they decided to do it themselves. To raise money, Jobs sold his Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator, and in April 1976 they founded Apple Computer with Ronald Wayne. Jobs said he chose the name partly because he was on a fruitarian diet at the time and found it friendly and unintimidating.
The rest is history. Jobs was a visionary, and driven by that vision Apple grew fast. But Jobs realised that if the company was going to reach its potential, it needed experienced management. So he set his sights on John Sculley, the president of PepsiCo's Pepsi-Cola division.
There was no obvious reason for Sculley to leave a powerful, well-paid job at one of the world's leading companies to work with a group of young computer enthusiasts in an industry that barely existed. Not surprisingly, he said no.
Jobs would not take no for an answer. He went back again, and again Sculley turned him down. Finally Jobs laid out his vision with all the passion he had, and then he asked Sculley a question that Sculley could not get out of his head: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world?"
Sculley said yes. Whatever happened between the two men later, the personal computer did change the world.
Takeaway: Jesus comes to each of us with a similar question: will you spend your life making sugared water, or will you join him in changing the world? Most of us spend our days on the ordinary round of earning, buying and accumulating, and fit God in around the edges. But Jesus had a vision of the kingdom of God, and he calls us to put it at the centre of our lives, our reason for being (Matthew 6:33). Let us not be content with what everyone around us is doing, or afraid of new ways of thinking.
Source: Based on the "Silicon Valley Story" and IdeaFinder websites, as cited in the original illustration. Facts and the Sculley quote checked against Wikipedia's History of Apple Inc.
Sylvester Stallone's Amazing Story: The Script He Would Not Sell
Some details of this story come from Stallone's own retellings over the years, and not all of them can be independently confirmed. We note below which parts are documented.
Sylvester Stallone became famous through the film Rocky. But his own story is as inspiring as the boxer he played.
He was born in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, in 1946. During his birth, forceps accidentally severed a nerve in his face, paralysing part of it and leaving him with the slurred speech and snarling look that later became his trademark. He spent part of his early childhood in foster and boarding care. As a boy he was bullied, and he struggled at school. His classmates voted him "Most Likely to End Up in the Electric Chair".
He studied drama at the University of Miami but left without a degree and tried to make it as an actor. Success did not come. By his own account he was so broke at one point that he sold his beloved dog for a few dollars and cried as he did it. (He has given the price as $50; Snopes notes there is no contemporary record of the sale.) He has also said he had just $106 in the bank, a figure reported by The New York Times in 1976.
His breakthrough came on 24 March 1975, when he watched Muhammad Ali fight Chuck Wepner, a little-known underdog who stunned everyone by lasting into the fifteenth round against the world champion. Stallone went home and, within about three days, had written the first draft of Rocky.
When he took the script to producers, they loved it. But they saw it as a vehicle for an established star, with names such as Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds being discussed, and they offered to buy it. According to Wikipedia's account, the producers offered him as much as $350,000 for the rights.
Stallone refused. He would sell only if he played the lead himself. They raised the offer; he still said no. For a struggling actor with almost nothing in the bank, it was an extraordinary risk.
"I knew that if I took the money I'd regret it for the rest of my life," Stallone said, as the story is usually told. "And the picture was about taking that golden shot when you finally get it."
In the end the studio gave in. The budget was cut sharply, and Stallone was allowed to star. Rocky was released in 1976 and became a huge hit. At the 49th Academy Awards it won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Stallone, the kid voted most likely to end up in the electric chair, became a star.
Takeaway: Whoever we are, whatever we look like, and whatever others think we are capable of, our story is not finished. Know what you are called to do, wait for your moment, and when it comes, do not trade it for something smaller.
Source: Original illustration based on a Boxing Monthly report. Biographical facts checked against Wikipedia; dog and bank-balance details checked against Snopes.
Final thoughts
A four-year-old who threw down a toy violin, an entrepreneur who asked a question that changed a career, and an actor who chose his dream over a fortune. Each refused to settle for less than the real thing.
Godly ambition is not about building our own name. It is about refusing to waste the one life we have been given on sugared water. What "real thing" is God calling you toward?
More stories you may like:
- Stories About Vocation, Calling and Integrity
- Stories About Perseverance, Failure and Success
- Stories About Vision and Leadership
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.Stories About Ambition: 3 Sermon Illustrations on Chasing the Real Thing
Comments
Post a Comment