2020 has started out to be a year of tremendous difficulties, afflictions, and grief.  And in many ways we all have been affected.  But the next time you’re tempted to go on Social Media and whine…ask yourself this question.  Am I attention-seeking, and eliciting participants in my personal pity-party…or am I like Paul who made his friends aware of the hardships he was enduring in order to show them where his trust rested?  For in the next verse, Paul points out that this happened that, “we might not rely on ourselves but on God…”   Enduring pain, bearing up under persecution, and experiencing grief are all part of the human experience…no one is immune.  But it’s how we react to it that makes the real difference.  It’s called suffering well.  Of placing our reliance on God rather than man…and of pointing to Him as the one we depend on…so that all the glory goes to Him, not us.