Desirable Determination Series

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is one of the great modern

examples of the power of determination. He served time in

the Siberian waste land for making a disparaging remark

about Stalin in a letter. He endured six years of

imprisonment, when he suddenly discovered the joy of

writing. He was suffering for his writing, but he felt an

urge to write things down. His mind was alive with ideas he

wanted to get into words on paper. But, of course, it was

impossible to do, for any scrap of paper he would write on

would be confiscated, and cause suspicion. No matter how

innocent the lines, they could be construed to be a code of

some kind, and he would be in deeper trouble.

I am sure we are all agreed, these are not the conditions

conducive to producing a mediocre writer, let alone, a

world famous writer. Only the most determined mind

would even bother to try and figure out how to start a

writing career in such a setting. Solzhenitsyn had just such

a mind. He would write down 12 to 20 lines at a time, and

then memorize them and burn the paper. Daily he would

go over the lines in his head. He noticed the Catholics with

their rosaries, and he saw how this could be an aid to his

memory. He made his own rosary out of a hundred pieces

of hardened bread. The Catholics were annoyed at his

religious devotion, for their rosaries only had 40 beads.

Everywhere he went, as he stood in line, and marching to

work, he was fingering his beads. Nobody could know that

he was memorizing what he had written. By the end of his

sentence he had 12 thousand lines in his head, and as a free

man he quickly put them on paper, and was on his way to

becoming one of the most read authors of the 20th century.

The old saying that where there is a will there is a way is

confirmed over and over again. People with a spirit of

determination are doing the improbable all the time, and by

the grace and providence of God, sometimes even the

impossible. Some people are just gifted with this spirit of

determination. Most of the great scientist and inventors of

history have had to have this spirit, for only those who can

endure and enormous load of failure, disappointment,

ridicule, and resistance, can ever survive long enough to

produce anything new. Only the determined spirit is willing

to risk doing what everyone else considers foolish.

All of Boston thought Frederick Tudor was mad when he

conceived the idea of cutting blocks of ice from his father's

pond, and shipping it to the tropics. But he did it anyway.

He set sail with 130 tons of ice to the island of Martinique.

The blazing sun was diminishing his frozen assets rapidly,

just as everyone said it would. The ice cream he made in his

hand freezer did become an instant success, and he made

$300.00 the first day. But he lost $3,500.00 because his ice

melted too fast. That should have been an end of another

hair-brained idea, but he was determined it could be done.

He developed better ways to cut, pack, and transport ice.

To make a long story short, the Tudor Ice Company made

him a millionaire and the ice king. He was on of those

people to whom you do not say, it can't be done.

Longfellow, the poet, visited Tudor once, and he was taken

to see his wheat field by the sea. Longfellow wrote, "Having

heard that wheat will not grow in such a place, he is

determined to make it grow there."

History is loaded with such determined people, and so is

the Bible, and so is the book of Ruth in particular. The

book only exists because of Ruth's determination to stick

with Naomi regardless of the cost, and in spite of the

opposition, and the unlikely prospects of a happy future.

Take away this determined spirit of Ruth, and you are

down to 65 books of the Bible, for Ruth would have gone

back to Moab, and God would have had to find someone

else to fulfill His purpose. Ruth is a powerful example of

the destiny determining power of a determined spirit. Like

Christian in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, she had many

obstacles in her path, and only a very determined spirit

could have kept her going. She had depressing

circumstances, for they were basically helpless widows with

all the men in their lives gone, and the future not looking

very bright.

She had disappointments. First Orpha deserted the

cause. She started as part of this weeping trio, but it was

soon a duet, for she turned back. She did not have the