Evil men, not God, threw the apostle Paul into prison, hoping to put an end to his ministry. But their plan backfired, and the gospel spread (Phil. 1:12-13). Paul didn't know why God allowed his imprisonment, but he saw how God used it for good.

When All-Star baseball player Dave Dravecky lost his pitching arm to cancer, he struggled to find the reason for his loss by adding up the positive gains in his life. He eventually realized that he had been confusing the results of his loss with trying to understand God's unknowable purposes.

To illustrate the difference, Dave refers to his amputated arm. One result of his radical surgery was that medical researchers had cancerous tissue to study that could advance their knowledge of the disease. This is something good. "It wouldn't be such a good thing, though," Dave writes, "if the purpose for my surgery was to provide an arm so that the pathology department would have a specimen to study." That may be one result, but it doesn't explain God's higher purpose.

Instead of trying to discover God's hidden purpose for his cancer, Dave now focuses on a result that he has seen: "I used to depend on myself. Now I depend more on God."

That may be his biggest gain of all.  — Joanie Yoder