Quote on suffering

I ran across this quote in the book I'm reading right now and thought it was excellent.

"Suffering- especially in the forms of potentially ominous pain or significant longer-term suffering-tends to produce clear benefits. So how does it do this? It does it in part by challenging our shallow confidences. As long as things seem to be going well for us, we tend to harbor a number of false beliefs. One of them is that our lives are largely in our own control." Mark R. Talbot (from "For the Fame of God's name")

I tend on the optimistic side of personality (it will all work out okay...) and I needed this reminder to "challenge our shallow confidences". Putting our hope in Christ is always far better than trusting in some circumstance that is fleeting in the moment.