These are very exciting times in which to live. Eastern Europeans in communist countries are enjoying freedoms they have waited for, for 30 years. Nelson Mandela is free after 27 years of being in prison in South Africa. Perhaps it's hard for us to comprehend the faith and the hope which sustained these people for so long. Why didn't they give up sooner? Why not just accept failure, quit, drop out, transfer somewhere else, hang it up?

One of my joys in life was visiting the famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I had not anticipated that it would be a joy at all. I know little about art. Most of the art appreciation classes I took in college were taught by little men who wore bow ties and plaid coats with striped pants, and droned incessantly in monotone voices. And the day we got off the train at Central Station in Amsterdam had not started well. We went to a restaurant. The Dutch people allow their dogs into restaurants. So I had had a chicken salad sandwich in a coffee shop with a huge dog up against my legs.

My wife and the other couple with us were not delighted, with my commentary as to what I thought of Amsterdam. At last we walked up the huge steps to the Rijksmuseum. We went through room after room of beautiful paintings. Nice paintings. Old paintings. Boring paintings. Yawn! Then we came to a room with some huge Rembrandt paintings. I stopped in amazement at the difference in quality. The great painter left out no aspect of the human experience. In addition to the beauty and symmetry of the human body, he faithfully and meticulously painted the moles, the tiny scars, the dirt under the fingernails, the wear of the years in the corners around the eyes, the wrinkles on the face and even the hardening blood vessels. The pictures seemed to be more alive than the other paintings.

In a vivid sense the Bible is a book that is very much alive. It is the Rembrandt of religious experience because it tells life as it really is, with scars and moles and dirt under the fingernails. It chronicles not just the pious events of religious history, but the bitter dregs of failure that lie temporarily at the bottom of everyone's cup. And well it should. A God that cannot deal with failure is not much of a God. No one lives life without some failure. Everyone stumbles and falls at some point along the road.

All we know about the early life of Jesus, from the time he was born until the time he began his ministry at age 30, is that he ran away from home when he was 12 years old. For three long, anxious days Mary and Joseph looked for him in vain. Imagine your child disappearing for three days.

The talk among the neighbors must have been quite lively. Mary and Joseph must have faced no small amount of public embarrassment in the experience. What kind of father loses his kid for three days? What kind of a mother loses her boy?

When they were finally able to catch up with him, he was in the temple. They were, understandably, quite angry. Yet, Jesus seemed almost totally unconcerned. "Why have you come after me?" he questioned. "Did you not know I must be here in my Father's house (Luke 2:49)."

The Scriptures relate that Mary and Joseph did not understand at all what their son did or the remarks he made. I can conjecture the modern-day parental and spousal wrath that would have been the response from many. The battle to save self esteem would have been a neurotic categorical demand that the failure was somebody else's fault. "Well, if you weren't gone all the time, Joseph, and spent more time with the boy, he might not prefer these strangers to his own family."

"Well, what kind of homemaker gets so wrapped up in her civic responsibilities and her bridge club, Mary, that she loses the whereabouts of her own child?"

"Well, if you'd go to church more, Joseph, and had finished college, you might be able to answer his religious questions. You dummy!"

Actually, the Scripture simply says that Mary, "his mother kept all these things in her heart." Wouldn't you love to know what those things were? Moles. Warts. Wrinkles. The dirt under the fingernails. Failure. Fortunately she did not give up too soon on him.

In like manner, this Rembrandt of a book we treasure tells of a tremendous family fight that took place in the life of the early church. The first missionary journey of Paul was a glowing success. Paul and Barnabas had literally opened up the world for advancement of the faith. They had planted churches in strategic places. It must have been a hectic pace. Paul was the numero uno champion of Christianity - educated in Tarsus University - a brilliant mind, a powerful tongue and an indefatigable spirit. And Barnabas was equally powerful and brilliant. He was the chief preacher in the church at Antioch where the word "Christian" was used for the first time. He was the man in charge. When Paul was converted no one at Jerusalem headquarters believed it, Barnabas was the one who had presented Paul. Barnabas was somebody. When famine swept Jerusalem, Barnabas had brought money down from Antioch to feed Peter, James and John. And when Peter came out of jail he had nowhere to go, so Barnabas arranged for Peter to stay with Barnabas' sister, Mary, and her boy, John Mark.

Now can you imagine an 18-year-old young person traveling with two racehorses like Paul and Barnabas? They moved fast. They threw their money and power around like they were limitless. The food was bad. But they pressed from one continent to another and traveled through rough seas and dark mountain passes. The mosquitoes were everywhere. And Paul and Barnabas didn't mind going to jail now and then if it would get more publicity for the cause.

Imagine traveling with those two egomaniacs! Well, John Mark had to travel with them. He was Barnabas' nephew.

Perhaps his sister, Mary, persuaded them to take him. Perhaps the young man volunteered out of genuine passion for Christ, but also out of naivete over what it would be like. John Mark failed. He did not finish the journey. He quit. He gave up. He packed up and went home to Jerusalem and to his mother, Mary. He was a young failure in life. A career that never got off the ground. Paul did not like it. When John Mark asked to go on the second journey, Paul flatly said, "No, you're fired. No, you can't go. You're a failure. You quit on me once and you won't get a second chance."

Well, thus began a historic quarrel that became a disaster. The difference between Paul and Barnabas became so sharp that Paul took Silas and headed in one direction and Barnabas and Mark sailed in the other direction to Cyprus. The early church had hardly been planted when its two champions fell out with each other.

I have taken your time to convey these stories because I believe they are there in the Scriptures for a reason: There are too many people in the world whose lives have been unfulfilled because someone gave up on them too soon! And there are too many people in the world who gave up on themselves too soon.

Back in the late 1970s, I pastored a church adjacent to Clemson University. Occasionally I would get invited to go over to the football dorm and give a little talk to the players. I continued that practice a few times even after I left South Carolina. On one occasion I was curious about something, so I asked, "How many of you fellows never played organized football before ninth grade in school?" There were 46 athletes in the room and exactly 31 hands went up. Some of the raised hands played in the Super Bowl years later. You see, they were the kids who were too fat, too gangly, too poor or too uncoachable at an early age to play with the smaller kids with finer motor skills. They were the young failures whose frames filled out later, whose baby fat turned into muscle, whose awkwardness came under control later. They were just starting to come into their own while others were peaking.

I repeat, there are too many persons whose lives have been unfulfilled because someone gave up on them too soon.

Fortunately, these biblical stories have a somewhat happy ending. We all know how Jesus and Mary turned out - his passionate concern for her from the cross and his entrustment of her care to John. The story of Paul and John Mark has an equally happy ending. One of the downside risks in being an earthshaker and a traveler is loneliness. When you get out on the point pushing a new idea, it is sometimes lonely out there. And when your cause turns from an immediate success to a minority position in the world, you can find yourself stretched thin beyond your belief. That happened to Paul. In his valiant effort to include the Gentiles in Christianity, his Jewish friends abandoned him. Alone and disconsolate in prison, he wrote these words to the church at Colossae: "Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, and John Mark, the nephew of Barnabas - if he comes to you, receive him and Justus. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom who have been a comfort to me (Colossians 4:10-11)." Then he wrote to Timothy these words: "Only Luke is with me. Take John Mark and bring him with you; for he is very useful for the ministry (2 Timothy 4:11)."

It is really unbelievable. The rift was healed. The fledgling young disciple filled out. The baby fat turned to muscle and the awkwardness came under control. What a mistake, what a tragic mistake, Paul would have made, giving up on John Mark too soon! As his life wound down, one of the two people who stood by Paul was a person he had fired as a young failure.

There is not a person in this room, if my guess is correct, who does not have at least one person in his or her family, however close or remote, out there trying to find his or her way back from an awful failure. There probably aren't many people here who don't number among their family or former friends or teammates, a John Mark out there trying to find his or her way back from failure. And there will come a time when you will be tempted to give up or quit too soon.

Seven years ago a black woman, a Mrs. Hummings, called me from Winston-Salem. She told me that she had moved there two years earlier from Georgia so her little boy could study in the North Carolina School of the Arts. He played the viola. His mother explained that her son had never played before a live audience. She wondered if we would let him do a concert in our church to get some experience since he had to go to Washington and audition for some financial aid. She stated, "We're here with very little besides a dream for him. We moved the whole family for that dream."

I arranged a time for him to play in Emerywood Baptist Church. Around 60 people turned out to create an audience and help the boy. I'll never forget when he and his mother got out of their car that day over on Country Club Drive. The boy was 13 years old. He was tall and gangly. Awkward looking. He wore tennis shoes and an old felt jacket. He didn't own a suit. And was he shy. But he could play the viola. He was excellent.

After his concert, one of the men in the church came up to me. He said, "We can't let that boy go to audition in Washington in tennis shoes and jacket. He'll be up against well-heeled kids from elite schools. We can at least dress him."

So several of the people collected $400. The next week he and his mother went down to Belks in Weschester Mall. He got two suits and a pair of shoes. A person later commented, "That's a wasted $400. You might as well kiss that off. You'll never see any return on that. What a waste."

Two days ago I received a surprise letter in the mail. It contained a letter from these people I had not heard from in seven years. Enclosed was a newspaper article clipped from The Winston-Salem Journal. The headline read "Winston-Salem Musician Is Chosen to Play at Carnegie Hall." Underneath the tuxedo clad picture of that former tennis-shoed 13-year-old was a single sentence: "A dream come true."

So if the Bible says anything to you, it says, "Don't give up too soon!"