Sometimes our highest hopes are destroyed so that we can be prepared for better things.  The failure of the caterpillar is the birth of the butterfly.  The passing of the bud is the blooming of the rose.  The death of the seed is the prelude to its resurrection as wheat.  Someone has said that plants grow best in the darkness of night just before dawn.  Our failures can be the door to a new success.

The name of John James Audubon is forever associated with the magnificent paintings he made of the birds of North America.  No one else has so accurately painted the birds and the natural environment in which they were found.  It might not have happened had he not gone bankrupt in business!  In 1808, he opened a store in Louisville, Kentucky.  It was after he went bankrupt in 1819 that he began traveling and painting birds.  We are all richer because of his business failure (Ministers Manual 1991, p. 320). Shake off the dust and go on.