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Every Hardship
Yenny Kartika Official Writer
13392 Corinthians
12:9
My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made
perfect in weakness.
Bible Reading
for a Year [bible]psalm97[/bible]; [bible]0luke18[/bible]; [bible]iikin24-25[/bible]
Like many
towns, Enterprise, Alabama, has a prominent monument. But the monument in
Enterprise is unlike any other. The statue doesn’t recognize a leading citizen;
it celebrates the work of a beetle. In the early 1900s, this boll weevil made
its way from Mexico to the southern US. Within a few years it had destroyed
entire crops of cotton, the primary source of revenue. In desperation, farmers
started growing another crop—peanuts. Realizing they had been dependent on one
crop for too long, they credited the beetle with forcing them to diversify,
which led to increased prosperity.
The boll
weevil is like things that come into our lives and destroy what we have worked
hard to accomplish. Devastation results—sometimes financial, emotional, or
physical—and it is frightening. We witness the end of life as we know it. But
as the people of Enterprise learned, the loss of what is old is an opportunity
to discover something new. God may use hardship to get us to give up a bad
habit or learn a new virtue. He used a thorn in Paul’s flesh to teach him about
grace (2 Cor. 12:7-9).
Instead of
striving to preserve old habits that are no longer effective, we can view every
hardship as an opportunity for God to cultivate a new virtue in us.
God often uses bitter experiences to
make us better.
