JK. Rowling is, by almost ever standard, an amazing success story. To date, the sales of her seven books, based on the character, Harry Potter have sold over 500 million copies. The sales of her books and movies have grossed over 15 billion dollars. Since the publishing of the Harry Potter series she has also released three books for adults (as if adults didn’t read the Harry Potter series) under the pseudo name ‘Robert Galbraith’. These three books have been received with great success as well. Her success is nothing short of amazing. She is the author of one of the bestselling book series and movies series of all time. Rowling is worth over 1 billion dollars and it seems like everything she puts on paper becomes an instant popular success.
Rowling’s achievement is not the whole of the story. It is widely known now that she was far from successful before the publishing of the first Harry Potter. Her marriage had fallen apart. She was a single mother who was living on government assistance. In her own words she was, “As poor as a person could be in modern Britain.” She was living in poverty, one of her greatest fears.
While delivering the commencement speech to the graduating class at Harvard University in 2008, Rowling told the crowd that failure is inevitable. She stated, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” After living in her failure, Rowling realized that failure was in many ways a blessing. It allowed her to strip away her fears and realize that she could survive; she could dream and seek to act on her dreams. She climbed out of poverty with a laser-like focus on the dream she had always had, to become a writer. It was difficult, but after being turned down by several publishers and being told by her editor that she should find a day job, “just-in-case,” Harry Potter was release and her dream was realized. She continues this day to live out that beautiful dream and use the gifts that God has given her.
I wonder how often the fear of failure keep us from stepping out in life and acting on our dreams? God has given us talents and gifts to use. God has given us dreams and visions to make a difference, but so often action does not follow these dreams. Failure is nothing to fear. Not living, that is something to fear. Inaction is something that causes us to fail. What are your dreams? Big or small, they are a gift of God.
-Rev. Keith King, Online Campus Pastor
