Sabbath Thought – Enduring

Stories of success are all around us, and oftentimes once a person “succeeds” it is easy to think that success showed up out of nowhere. It is common to only see the success and not what proceeded the success. What would you think is a predicter of success?

Psychologist Angela Duckworth began her career as a chemist, and in that role developed Lucite dispersion lacquer (acrylic glass coating). She left that field, went back to university and obtained a B.A. in neurobiology and later a M.Sc. in neuroscience, then a Ph.D. in psychology. After graduating with the M.Sc. degree, she became a management consultant. That field didn’t satisfy her, so she left after about a year of consulting and became a math teacher in a San Francisco public high school. 

It was during her time as a math teacher that she started to ponder which students eventually succeeded. She began to notice that it was not always the smartest students – and further, the smartest students were not always her best students. She couldn’t let go of determining who succeeded and why. This is when she left teaching to get her Ph.D. She studied military officer candidates, new teachers in at-risk schools, athletes, corporate executives and generally anyone who notably succeeded in any given field.

What she found initially perplexed her. IQ didn’t determine success. Neither did talent. Family background or money was not a given. What she eventually saw as a commonality across every field of study or career field was what she called “grit”. What she called grit was a combination of passion and perseverance for long-term goals. That is, success was not determined by desire, not by luck, or how hard you worked. What determined success was duration. She saw in all of her studies and interviews that success came down to how long you stayed with your goal. That person achieved what they wanted to achieve long after most others had quit or moved on. Dr. Duckworth summarized it this way: “Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare.”

I have been associated with God’s Church for more than 58 years now. Only a couple of my friends from my youth stayed with the Faith. Only a small percentage of my Ambassador College (a college set up during the Worldwide Church of God days to primarily teach and prepare some for the ministry) classmates are still a part of God’s way of life. In the modern era, more than 300,000 people once professed this way of life, but are no longer a part of it. 

In the context of Dr. Duckworth, the Bible actually talked about this endurance before she “discovered” it. In Matthew 24:13 Jesus Christ said, “…he who endures to the end shall be saved.” Solomon recorded in Ecclesiastes 9:11 that “…the race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill….” Speed fades as does physical strength, wisdom, wealth or skill alone will not guarantee a positive outcome. The apostle Paul follows up on this thought by reminding us that we must “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling…” (Philippians 2:12 – work it out day in and day out, year in and year out), and to “…not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart,” (Galatians 6:9).

Spiritual “success” owes much to staying the course over the long-term, never loosing sight of the goal (Matthew 6:33) and never giving up our calling (Revelation 3:11). 

I wish you a very meaningful Sabbath,

Dan Dowd

18 July, 2026