As I was sipping my fresh cup of coffee this morning, I thought back to a simple yet powerful book I read a year or so ago.

The book, called The Coffee Bean, addresses what happens when we face hard situations and asks us if we’re more like a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?

In hot water, carrots become weaker and eggs become harder because the hot water affects them more than they affect the water. But not the coffee bean. The bean, when placed in the same hot water, transforms that water into a beverage that is consumed to the tune of over $100 billion in sales each year globally.

The coffee bean transforms the environment. You and I have that same power to set the temperature in the room instead of simply reflecting it. You may have heard it said that we are to be thermostats instead of thermometers, and that analogy is an older way of saying be the bean!

In a tough, pressure-filled circumstance? Can you feel the heat rising? Allow that circumstance to be used by God to shift the atmosphere through you! Don’t allow the trials you face to make you softer or harder. Instead, be the bean and allow them to make you — and those around you — better.