There are, in every situation, two factors: there is what happens, and there is how we take what happens. How we take what happens goes back to what kind of person we are, and what kind of belief we have about life as a whole.

If the whole scheme of life is not a scheme at all but a chaos, if there is no thread of purpose running through it all but only confusion, then our misfortunes are just part of the general mess. But if God is, and if life is His creation, with meaning in the middle of it, then we may hope to discover a pattern which will both give coherence to it all and help to interpret any one event in the unfoldment.