Little children learn to walk by falling many times. It is normal to fall when we are learning something new. Getting up and trying again and again is how each of us learn to do things well. We read in the Bible that even the righteous man may fall seven times (Proverbs 24:16). The point to note is that he must rise each time he falls in order to fall again. Therefore he is making a second, third and seventh attempt. When we are paying attention to what we are doing, we are learning to do it better—even when we fail in our attempts.

The only time we become a failure is when we do not rise again. That may occur when we blame our fall on someone else. When we blame others, we are not examining ourselves to see if we need some correction. It is interesting that God tells us to be sure we look for the "plank" in our own eye before we try to remove the "speck" from the eye of another. We become a failure when we blame others for our faults and our falls (Luke 6:41-42).