A New Day

By: Pastor Johnie Akers   

Philippians 1:12, “But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.”  Before the Civil War, Edmund McIlhenny operated a sugar plantation and a salt-works on Avery Island, Louisiana. Yankee troops invaded the area in 1863, and McIlhenny had to flee.  When he returned in 1865, his sugar fields and salt-works were ruined. One of the few things left weresome hot Mexican peppers that had re-seeded themselves in the kitchen garden.  McIlhenny, who was living hand to mouth, started experimenting with the ground peppers to make a sauce that would liven up his dull diet. His newfound sauce became wildly popular with the local residents.  Soon, he was shipping it throughout the country.  Mr. McIlhenny’s creation would become known as Tabasco sauce.  150 years later, the McIlhenny Company and its Tabasco business is still run by the McIlhenny family.  Instead of Edmund McIlhenny bemoaning what he had lost during the Civil War, he began to evaluate what remained.  A changed perspective created the impetus for a change of direction.  The very thing that seemed to destroy the plantation owner’s livelihood and future actually provided the watershed moment that revolutionized his business and life.  In our Scripture lesson today Paul the apostle shares how that the very adversity that would seem to be the death knell of his ministry, actually served for the expansion of his ministry and the proliferation of the gospel.  What initially seemed to be a curse was actually a blessing.  This day may find you surveying your losses.  Perhaps you have just experienced a bankruptcy, divorce, business collapse, or one of a myriad of other challenges that has left you resigned to the ashes of what once was a fruitful life.  Yet instead of focusing on what you have lost, begin surveying what remains.  It is with what is left, that God will enable you to not only recover but to excel in the new path that He has prepared for you, beginning now, with this new day.