October 7, 1916, was a Saturday. But it was not just any Saturday; it was the Saturday of the worst defeat in college football history. According to historian G. Frank Burns, “There’s no such thing as a true account of this game…. The temptation to embroider is irresistible.”1 The previous spring, Georgia Tech’s baseball team had been humbled by the Cumberland College Bulldogs 22-0. As payback, Georgia Tech invited Cumberland College to play them in football. They should have stayed home. The score was 63-0 at the end of the first quarter, 126-0 at halftime. In the end Cumberland College found themselves on the wrong end of the most lopsided defeat imaginable: 222-0. Late in the game, one of many fumbles occurred in the Bulldog backfield. The ball rolled toward Cumberland player B.F. Paty. The man who fumbled the ball yelled, “Pick it up!” Paty replied, “Pick it up yourself, you dropped it.” Vision and Hope Few of us have been beaten as soundly as the Cumberland College Bulldogs were that day, but most of us can relate to B.F. Paty. Sometimes our situation looks so hopeless that we want to quit trying. Life knocks us down again and again; it’s easy to lose hope. But it is often not the flashiest or most gifted people who succeed. It is often the humble, dependable folks who tenaciously refuse to give up. They’re the ones who keep the wheels turning in any organization. The apostle Paul was that kind of person. In 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, he wrote: Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Paul’s outlook allowed him to undergo intense hardship and pain with an unwavering faith in God. For Paul, it wasn’t as much a matter of will and determination as it was a matter of vision and perspective. It is painfully obvious that our earth suits wear out, our time on this planet is brief, and none of us knows how many days we have left. However long our stay here is, compared to eternity, it’s not even a blip on the screen. But our inner man is actually growing stronger as our outer man is growing weaker. That’s how it’s supposed to be.