Money, money, money!  When will I have enough?  I'll live off of nothing, if I can, if I can only stop working for money!  I work at Kroger because the church doesn't have enough money to pay me to work at what I love, full-time.  I work at Kroger because I need more money for food, rent, gas, debt, etc.

Genesis 3:17-19 (NIV)

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
       "Cursed is the ground because of you;
       through painful toil you will eat of it
       all the days of your life.

"It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
       and you will eat the plants of the field.

"By the sweat of your brow
       you will eat your food
       until you return to the ground,
       since from it you were taken;
       for dust you are
       and to dust you will return"

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I suppose I'm paying my dues?  No, not really.  The righteous live by faith.  It is by grace that my debt is paid.  Rather, these trials and hardships are for my education, not my atonement.  I am like the Israelites, who wandered in the desert, not to self-attain worthiness before God, but to gain the perspective of their need for Him.  I am learning that, in times of difficulty, I ought to pray for deliverance but also for the ability to learn whatever lesson(s) God is giving me, so to grow.  I need to not be delivered by God, in certain respects, for a time, in order to fully realize His deliverance when it does arive.  I'm realizing more and more the wisdom of the humility of Christ's prayer "Not my will, but Yours be done."  Amen... I have no idea what's specifically best for me at any one present moment in my life.  On the other hand, I know Christ, who is very specific to me, and very much the best for me at any moment.

Bathing me in grace, Christ beckons me "live a life worthy of the calling [I] have recieved."  He truly is God, making a son out of this beast!