Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Romans 5:4.

Hope and optimism are not the same. 'Hope is humble, trustful, vulnerable. Optimism is arrogant, brash, complacent. Hope has known the pang of suffering and the chill of despair. Only one who has cried de profundis can really appreciate the meaning of hope. Optimism has not faced the enormity of evil... What drives some to atheism is not a genuinely biblical hope but an insensitive optimism masquerading as such hope'. Perhaps John Macquarrie could have extended this idea to God's being with us in all our times and testings - when we abound, and when we are abased.

Success is never permanently satisfying: God hasn't made us that way. We're not to settle down here permanently - not even on the top of a mountain. (Looking down on others isn't helpful spiritually; and you expend a lot of negative energy excluding others from the peak.) The reward or prize is offered in the next life, said Jesus and Paul: in this, our badge of office is a towel, serving others rather than dominating them.

Life is most enjoyable when serendipitous. Satisfaction is in the journeying, rather than the arriving.

Lord, your will be done. Amen.