Yes, the world is a tough place to live in, and it's easy to die here if you're not careful — sometimes without even knowing you're going to.  But it isn't an impossi­bly difficult world to live in, either.  Our species has grown, matured, become smarter, and wiser, not by being lazy and slothful, decadent or unproductive, but by the tough challenges of living and overcoming them.

We wonder why there is so much difficulty and trouble in the world, most of it created by people, including ourselves.  Yet, difficulties do provide experience and wisdom in the use of our will to consciously and intentionally overcome them.  Tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes, and human needs provide an environment for decision-making for exercising our will in situations that test and stretch our strengths.  In that stretching, we grow.

God created the universe, set laws into place, and then gave us a mechanical, electrochemical body and brain, a mind, and a will to direct and train the mind and make decisions that hold the potential to develop our spirituality and contribute to the growth of our soul.  We learn from our mistakes and from right choices and decisions.  These experiences aid and guide our decisions that advance the maturity of our personality, increase our wisdom, and help us learn to love better each day.

Overcoming the difficulties of life and surviving tragedies tempers our character and our personalities, giving us a history in our soul by which our surviving spirit will be known after our physical death.  Our record of decisions marks our capacity for soul survivor­ship.  What this means is that our decisions, as humans on this material plane, enhance or diminish our capa­bility to overcome the challenges of survival in the many eras of our afterlife experiences.  Our soul is the record, or storehouse of wisdom, that returns to us in the afterlife after our material dissolution (mortal death).  If you make no decisions during your lifetime, then there is no wisdom to go forward with you.

Our intentions tell of the direction of our longings.  Shakespeare accurately said that all the world is but a stage upon which we act our lives.  Had God made it easy for us to live without risk, then we would become lazy, slothful, ignorant, and generally unproductive without need or want to progress and improve the way we live, and especially the way we think, what we think, and the choices we make.  We would not have developed to the point where we could express our loving nature, no matter how immature it may be, or our willingness to become like God.  Difficulties exist to force us to choose the way we act and react to life, to choose what we will become.  An easier life does provide more immediate choices for growth, though there is often less motivation to choose challenging avenues of growth.

The uncertainties of life and the vicissitudes of existence do not in any manner contradict the concept of the universal sovereignty of God.  All evolutionary creature life is beset by certain inevitabilities.  Consider the following:  

Is courage — strength of character —desirable?  Then must every person be reared in an environ­ment that necessitates grappling with hardships and reacting to disappointments.

Is altruism — service to one's fellows — desirable?  Then must life experience provide for encountering situations of social inequality.

Is hope — the grandeur of trust — desirable?  Then must human existence constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.

Is faith — the supreme assertion of human thought — desirable?  Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than it can believe.

Is the love of truth and the willingness to go wherever it leads — desirable?  Then must man grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible. 

Is idealism—the approaching concept of the divine — desirable?  Then must man struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surround­ings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things.

Is loyalty —devotion to highest duty — desirable?  Then must man carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion.  The valor of devotion to duty consists in the implied danger of default.

Is unselfishness —the spirit of self-forgiveness— desirable?  Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor.  Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake.  Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.

Is pleasure —the satisfaction of happiness — desirable?  Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.

The confusion and difficulties on our planet do not signify that God and Its administrators lack either interest or ability to manage affairs differently.  God possesses the power to make our planet a veritable paradise, but that would not contribute to the development of those strong, noble, and experienced characters that God so surely is forging out on our world between the anvils of necessity and the hammers of anguish.  Our anxieties and sorrows, trials and disappointments are just as much a part of God's divine plan for our world and our lives as the exquisite perfection and infinite adaptation of all things to their supreme purpose on Paradise — heaven.