Christians can sometimes become confused and despairing when bad things happen to them or people they care about. They see it as punishment or feel that if they had had more faith or been better Christians, these things never would have happened. Some even give up believing.
A better way to see trials in our lives is as a kind of spiritual workout. You don’t expect to do a double-gainer off the diving board or take on the heavyweight champ of the world without practice, do you? Neither should we expect to go to Heaven without practice here on earth. The whole of our lives here is a workout to get our spiritual muscles ready for the afterlife. We can’t stop bad things from happening, but we can control how we react to them. It’s all right to feel sad or angry or frustrated. But a Christian must ultimately choose to act in a Christ-like way, and by doing so, give glory to the Father and prepare ourselves for our lives in the world to come.
