What a delightful article indeed. Reading your literary reflections and insights on George Eliot’s “Silas Marner” from a Christian perspective was a welcome and thoughtful analogy. The endurance of Christ, the suffering Job, the anxiety of the psalmists, all paint the picture that no child of God can expect to float through life on a bed of ease. Trials and suffering test faith and produce perseverance, endurance, and humility, emptying us of self delusion and false pride. Although we do not like to be tested, or disciplined by God, we have no claim to be His child unless we endure correction, learn to accept His will, and realize that this same God loves us, and in His role as potter, the clay must be shaped and molded as He wills. Soli Deo Gloria