KneEmail - a devotional by Mike Benson associated with Forthright Magazine
Opportunity
CAPTAIN JERRY COFFEE was a pilot who was shot down during the Vietnam War...
He spent 7 years as a prisoner of war in some of the most hellish conditions known to humankind. He was beaten, became malnourished, and was kept in solitary confinement for years. But if you ask him how he feels about that experience, he would tell you that it was the most powerful transformational experience of his life. As he entered his cell for the first time, he realized he would be spending a lot of time alone. He asked himself, How can I use this experience to my advantage? He told me that he decided to see it as an opportunity rather than as a tragedy...
Though he admits that he would never want to have to do it again, he also says that he would not trade his experience as a prisoner of war for anything, for it was made him who he is today...(Jack Canfield).
KneEmail: "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:6-7; cf. Jas. 1:3; Prov. 17:3).