The learned scholars all believed that the sun and all the stars revolved around the earth. In 1609, one man, Galileo Galilei, dared to disagree. He showed by his observation that the sun was indeed the centre of our planetary system. His view so shocked the world at that time that the Catholic Church condemned him for heresy!
At a time when everybody believed that lightening was a phenomenon of the gods’ way beyond human comprehension, one man, Benjamin Franklin, dared to go against the popular opinion. In 1752, he set up an experiment to show that lightening was indeed electricity. In the process, he got a rude electric shock. What was the public opinion? That he was crazy!
The modern parachute was invented in the late 18th century by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand in France, who made the first recorded public jump in 1783. Note that there was no airplane then. When he took the leap off the tower, what do you think was on his mind? What do you think was on the mind of the crowd gathered to watch, including his family? Probably, it was something like “this man is a mad man on a suicide mission.”
Henry Ford was a man used to having his way. One thing was almost too much for him. When in 1905 he succeeded in designing a motorized vehicle that was a strange contraption of bicycle and combustion engine, Ford was viewed as a weirdo who had little future. When he drove by, people probably referred to him as a crazy young man. That madness set off the craze for cars as we know it today.
Nicola Tesla made a ‘bogus’ claim that he could talk to a person in a different town without the aid of a telephone or telegraph and he will be heard. Instantly, his friends sent him to a mad people’s home. The idea was simply crazy. His ‘craze’ was the birth of radio transmission.
Every time you have to push the frontiers of human experience, you must accept to take a risk of rejection and misunderstanding. It is a risk you cannot afford not to take if you have any worthy dream burning inside of you.
There are no jelly-skinned inventors or lily-livered adventurers. As a Christian youth, you need to add these values to your faith. The journey we are about to take is one that will challenge us and the system. They will call us mad. But we will answer only with our results. That is what David did, that is what Daniel did, and that is what Jesus did. That is what we must do.
A man with a vision is a mad man or woman until that vision is actualised. Are you ready to be called “mad”?.
©TOUCH THE SKY
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