Every hardship is an opportunity to become better

 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 1990s, 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-peanut. Realizing they had been dependent on one crop for too long, they credited the beetle with the forcing them to diversify, which led to increased prosperity.

        The boll weevil is like the things that come into our lives and destroy what we have worked hard to accomplish. Devastation results are 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 bad habit or learn a new virtue. He used a thorn in Paul's flesh to teach him about grace(2 Corinthians 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