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.
