Bad things do happen to good people in this world, but it is not God who wills it. God would like people to get what they deserve in life, but He cannot always arrange it. Forced to choose between a good God who is not totally powerful, or a powerful God who is not totally good, the author of the Book of Job chooses to believe in God's goodness.

Wilder offers this as his explanation of why good people have to suffer in this life. God has a pattern into which all of our lives fit. His pattern requires that some lives be twisted, knotted, or cut short, while others extend to impressive lengths, not because one thread is more deserving than another, but simply because the pattern requires it.

through the lives and souls of specific individuals. The truth is, life is unfair, and we would do well to come to terms with that fact.

If God is testing us, He must know by now that many of us fail the test. If He is only giving us burdens we can bear, I have seen Him miscalculate far too often.

Painful experiences can be used to better prepare us for heaven. You see, if we let it, even pain can shape us—make us better people—get rid of some of the ugly parts of our humanity.

I feel like everybody's got their health issues and their battles, and yeah, mine go up and down. It's never really over.

If there's one thing I'd say to anyone out there, is that if you're in this game, it's a rollercoaster. There's a lot of ups and downs.

Suffering prepares you by training you to trust God and know that He is always at work in your life.

We shouldn't be surprised when suffering and difficulty come our way; in fact, we should probably be surprised when they don't.

For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.

Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he died. And he who came after him ruled evilly.

But you will tell me this is an inartistic age, and we are an inartistic people, and the artist suffers much in this nineteenth century of ours. Of course he does. I, of all men, am not going to deny that. But remember that there has never been an artistic age, or an artistic people since the beginning of the world. The artist has always been, and will always be, an exquisite exception.