Affliction

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced. … For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

(2 Corinthians 12:10; 1:8–10; 4:8–9; Romans 8:35–37 ESV)

“If you pour a pail full of water on the floor of your house, it makes a great show, but if you throw it into the sea, there is no sign of it. So, afflictions considered in themselves, we think are very great, but let them be considered with the sea of god’s mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison.”
—Jeremiah Burroughs

From Day Eleven, Spiritual Exercises, Sacred Margins: On the Spiritual Life of a Writer.