I don’t know how many of you remember Dr. Robert Schuller who had an evangelist television show called The Hour of Power. He had built his ministry up from nothing and had a cathedral that he built called the Crystal Cathedral because it was all glass. The story I am about to tell you is one that he told on his show years ago. The reason I’m telling it is because it shows that when life gets really rough, you can let it break you or you can embrace it and use it to accomplish great things.

There is a farming community that grows potatoes. In order to get the top amount of money at the market, the farmers need to separate their potatoes in three sizes – small, medium and large. This was a big hassle because it was extremely time-consuming and labor intensive. They had to separate them into 3 piles, load them in their trucks, and take them to the market. The biggest reason they did this was because they got more money for potatoes that were separated.

There was one farmer who didn’t have a system by which he would separate his potatoes. He would just throw all his potatoes on the truck and take them to market. The other farmers were watching this farmer load up his truck and they were getting increasingly angry, because if one farmer didn’t separate his potatoes then they would all get a lower price for their potatoes.

After a number of weeks the other farmers had had it and went to talk to the farmer who didn’t separate his potatoes to let him know they were not happy. When they arrived at this gentleman’s farm, sure enough he wasn’t separating any of his potatoes. You can imagine how angry the other farmers were. They approached the farmer loading up his truck and started yelling at him about the fact that he wasn’t separating his potatoes.

It took the farmer a little bit of time to calm down the angry farmers. He said, “What are you talking about? I separate my potatoes every single week at harvest season.” The other farmers pointed at his truck and said, “Are you serious? None of those potatoes are separated.”  He said, “that’s because I separate them on the way to the market while I’m driving.” The other farmers said, “How is that possible?”

He informed the other farmers that after he loaded his truck he would take all the back roads to the market. He would deliberately pick rough roads when he was driving to the market. As the truck went over bumps on the rough roads, the small potatoes would go to the bottom, the medium potatoes in the middle, and the big potatoes would rise to the top.

So you see, the rougher you feel that you have it, you can be like the little potatoes and shake to the bottom or be like the big potatoes and rise to the top. Which do you want to be?

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