We can spend our lives trying to decipher the unresolvable mystery of human suffering. We can scan the scriptures with a magnifying glass, seeking guarantees of good health and exemption from trouble. But the truth is, we live in a world where bad things happen. We live in a world where there are germs, and diseases, and evils. The scriptures simply do not offer us the promise of insulation from pain, isolation from trouble, or exemption from hard things.
Hard things are hard.
And some of them come, not from a traceable origin, but as part of the mystery of life lived in a world where bad things can, and do, happen. Some of those hard threads in the fabric of life are little, narrow, hard threads that stay for a day and quickly fade away. Some of those hard threads in the fabric of life are big, wide, hard threads that come to stay and never fade away. Big or little, long or short, though, hard things are always hard. They make you stop at the operating room doors.