What will you do with your Mistake?

 

In 1928 Alexander Fleming made a careless mistake, which wasn’t his custom. He had completed university and medical school with academic distinction and served with honor in the army medical corps in World War I. Then he returned to research and teaching at the Royal College of Surgeons, trying to find antibacterial substances that would be nontoxic to animal tissues. And he had achieved a measure of success.

While researching influenza, however, he somehow contaminated a staphylococcus culture dish with mold and ruined the culture.

That uncharacteristically careless act resulted in what has been termed a "triumph of accident and shrewd observation," for Fleming noticed the mold had produced a bacteria free spot in the previously thriving staphylococcus colony. Upon further investigation, he observed the mold produced a substance that prevented staphylococcus growth, even when diluted eight hundred times. He christened that substance penicillin, and medicine has not been the same since.

For his mistake, Fleming was knighted, and in 1945 shared the Nobel prize. Because of Sir Alexander Fleming’s mistake, hundreds of thousands of people have been healed and even saved from death. We could use more mistakes of that sort.

 

So to whoever is reading this blog, for whatever reason God allowed you to find this spot, I want you to know mistakes are only temporary detours not permanent dead end streets. Mistakes can become your teachers and not your undertaker, Your mistake can either become your masterpiece, your "triumph of accident" or it can become your mess from which you do not escape,

 

Mistakes can leave scars, broken marriages, wasted years, lowered horizons and expectations, injured relationships, snickering congregations and confused minds but they also can sharpen senses, temper the soul, become life's compass and cause you to run faster and stay longer in the presence of God.

 

Whether your mistake becomes a masterpiece or a mess remains in your hands,,,,,,what will you do with your mistake?