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John Franklin Bair writes, in Poems For All Classes (1922), p. 174:
The Blessings of Affliction
Afflictions come, but not by chance,
Nor do they from the ground arise,
They may be heavy, but each one
Is but a blessing in disguise.By faith I see the hand of God
In all afflictions sent to me;
Therefore I will rejoice because
My future blessings they will be.
Do we measure our happiness in life by putting our afflictions on one scale and balancing them against our blessings? We may receive evil from the hand of the Lord, but we hope to receive more good. Is that the right way to take account of a good life? If one is opposed to the other, do we stand on pins and needles at the equipoise until the scales tip in our favor? In fact, on the scales of God's justice, we are found wanting. We deserve no good thing at all. But the afflictions of the righteous are in fact blessings in disguise. While they are hard providences, they are providences from the loving hand of Almighty God, who has promised that nothing "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8.39), and "that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8.28). That being case, we must reckon rightly that blessings and afflictions are not properly weighed against each other but weighed together as "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4.17).
William Henry Green (1825-1900), chair of Biblical and Oriental Literature at Princeton, addressed this notion in his commentary on Job, originally titled The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded (1874), pp. 313-314, 318; [republished with editorial modifications as Conflict and Triumph: The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded (1999), pp. 152, 154]:
Sublime as was Job's resignation in the first and second stage of his afflictions, it is sublimer now. When his property and his children were all swept from him at a stroke, Job still blessed the name of the Lord, mindful of the fact that the Lord had given what he now took away. When in addition his own person was visited with a dreadful and incurable malady, he meekly received the evil at the hands of the Lord, mindful of the good which he had previously bestowed.
His constant trust in God rooted itself each time in the past, in the abundance of former mercies, his grateful sense of which was not effaced by all the severity of his present trials. He put his trials in the scales over against the benefits which the Lord had so bounteously conferred upon him, and the latter still largely outweighed.
...
This is the lesson which Job has now learned; and hence he retracts all his murmuring words, and all that he has said reproachful to his Maker. He abhors himself for having uttered them, and repents in dust and ashes. He would not ask as before, 'Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?' [(2:10)]. There is no evil [adversity], there can be no evil [adversity] from the hand of the Lord.
Evil [Adversity] is good when it comes from him. He [Job] no longer puts the benefits from God in one scale and afflictions in the other. But afflictions are put in the same scale with benefits: they, too, are benefits when God sends them. And thus, instead of tending to create a counter-poise, they but add their weight to that of obligation previously existing.
