. Life is hard because God is good.

Many of life’s difficulties are by design.

In his kindness, God has intentionally shaped the world in such a way that effort would be required to
accomplish significant change, progress, and reward (2 Timothy 2:6). From the beginning, Adam is given
a job to work the ground (Genesis 2:15) and to cultivate and shape creation. In other words, work
showed up in the beginning. When embraced as a gift from God, work makes us stronger, more
collaborative, smarter, more skilled, and so on.

In fact, there can be great joy in this aspect of the hardness of life because