Many years ago the great preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick told of a teenage girl stricken with polio. As he visited with her, she told him about a conversation she'd had with one of her friends, who told her, "Affliction does so color life." To which this courageous young girl agreed, but said that she would choose which color.

At her young age she had already discovered one of life's great secrets: It's not what happens to you that matters as much as what happens in you. For faith in God does not so much shield us from danger and death as it gives us the power to overcome it.