Despair can come from deep grief, but it can also be a defense against the risks of bitter disappointment and shattering heartbreak. Resignation and cynicism are easier, more self-soothing postures that do not require raw vulnerability and tragic risk of hope. To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one's chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.

It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.

But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.

Newcastle was tough - the manager who'd signed me, Bobby Robson, got sacked three games into the season, so a new manager arrived, and I ended up going on loan again, to Aston Villa.

Chances are good that you once had a dream—a big, noble, beautiful dream—that you could envision coming true, but that dream was snatched away. An experience like that leaves you longing for a comeback.

We need to fight a battle to see this truth. When bad things happen, the Enemy comes through the door and tells us that God doesn't love us anymore and has no plan for us, and then we tend to bail out on God.

We become wiser by adversity prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

In other words, a believer who chooses to delight in the Word of God in the midst of adversity will avoid being offended. That person will be like a tree whose roots search deep to where the Spirit provides strength and nourishment. He will draw from the well of God deep within his spirit. This will mature him to the point where adversity will now be the catalyst for fruit. Hallelujah!

Trials and testings locate a person. In other words, they determine your spiritual position. They reveal the true condition of your heart.

Affliction is better than sin, and if God sends the one to cleanse us from the other, let us thank him, and be also content to pay the messenger.

For instance, when I think and meditate on what I saw at the cross, that will do it. And when I look at my embroidered coat, that will do it. Plus, when I read and study the scroll I carry in my pocket next to my heart, that will do it. When my thoughts are warmly stimulated about where I am going, that will do it too.

The trials that those men do meet with, Who are obedient to the heavenly call, Are many and various, and suited to the flesh, And come, and come, and come again afresh; That now or some time else we by them may Be taken, overcome, and cast away. O let the pilgrims, let the pilgrims then, Be vigilant and quit themselves like men.