Of all the US Presidents, Teddy Roosevelt was one of the toughest – both physically and mentally. But he didn’t start that way. America’s cowboy president was born in Manhattan to a prominent wealthy family. But as a child, he was puny and very sickly. He had debilitating asthma, possessed very poor eyesight, and was painfully thin. His parents weren’t sure he would survive.

When he was twelve, young Roosevelt’s father told him, “You have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make the body.” So he worked hard to build that body.

At different times in his life, Roosevelt was a cowboy in the wild west, an explorer and big-game hunter in Africa and Brazil, and a rough-riding Cavalry officer in the Spanish-American War. Years after his presidency, while preparing to deliver a speech in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a would-be assassin. With a broken rib and a bullet in his chest, Roosevelt insisted on delivering his one-hour speech before allowing himself to be taken to the hospital.

I’m not sure where Teddy Roosevelt was in his faith, but his life brings to mind Paul’s encouragement in Philippians 4:13: “I do everything through him who gives me strength“.

How has God strengthened you?

Tags: discipline, Roosevelt, strength