| Genesis 50:20 – “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” |
How do you feel about trouble?
Is it something to avoid?
We almost always do. After all, bad things create bad circumstances.
If you lose thousands of dollars, it deprives us of something we need.
If we get sick, we are deprived of our health.
That’s what the people of Enterprise, Alabama thought in 1895.
It was still the deep south and cotton was king. Acres of it blanketed the countryside. For the farmers it was their lifeblood. No cotton, no life.
That’s when it happened. An invasion, not of an army but of a pest called the Mexican boll weevil. It would lay its eggs in a cotton boll and when hatched, it would destroy the plant.
In 1895, they came to Enterprise and cotton died in that place.
Is that terrible? It depends.
Today, there is a plaque in Enterprise that reads. “In profound appreciation of the Boll Weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity this monument was erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama.”
What happened? With the cotton crop gone, farmers had to plant something else, something sturdy and resistant to this new plague. They planted peanuts. They discovered that they made more money with peanuts than they ever made with cotton. Without the boll weevil, they would have never known.
The Bible has a perspective that tragedy is just God’s hand covering the opportunity.
Abram was forced by Lot’s choice to take the scrub grass. It was here that promises came and nations were born.
The door to Asia closed to Paul and Silas. How, we never will know but some providential hand shut the gate to the province. And they had to detour…to Europe.
It was so forceful that Paul, locked in a cell awaiting appeal of a sentence of death, could be cheery. “I want you to know, brethren, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel,” (Philippians 1:12). In short, he found his boll weevil and it gave him peanuts.
If you are having struggles in life, remember the boll weevil. It might be the best thing for you.
Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com
