James 1:2–4 (ESV)

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,

Puritans would sometimes tell you that from the bottom of a well, on a bright sunny day, you can see the stars. I will take their word for it! But do you get the analogy? You are in the pit, but it is in the pit that you are able to see the beauty of what is above. And it is in the pits of our lives that we begin to see the lively faith acting on Christ and resting in him. But trials also teach us the shallowness and weakness of our faith. How little we believe and how quickly we are to murmur and complain. How easily tempted we are to fall away and not to persevere. And so we count our trials a joy, because they test us, they prove us in the very core of our being.1

Joseph A. Pipa