Read Psalm 25:2

It's impossible to pass through life without experiencing times when you cannot see your way through a deep valley. Times when the package delivered at the back door comes delivered in the ugly wrapping of death or affliction or illness or even divorce.

John Selden, the old British jurist and scholar, put it even more bluntly. "Pleasure is nothing else but the intermission of pain."

You may find yourself enjoying the intermission. Today, you may be smiling. Your heart may be light and merry. Perhaps answers to prayer have come beautifully and deliberately. You are swept away in delight. 

But it's also quite possible that you are caught in the grip of affliction. You may be going through some of the hardest days of your life. You may be wondering, Why? Why me? Why this trial?

When you persevere through a trial, God gives you a special measure of insight. You become the recipient of the favour of God as He gives to you something that would not be learned otherwise.

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Wisdom for the Way (Nashville: J. Countryman, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.