Clusters of Varied Fragrance and Beauty

Do you ever wonder how life seems unfair?  Why does one friend get cancer, but I do not?  Why am I burdened with a certain family problem but everyone else seems to be normal?  I found this analogy from John MacDuff helpful:

The gardener has occasionally to subject his plants to apparently rough treatment–cutting, lopping, mutilating; reducing them to unsightly shapes–before they burst into flower. Summer, however, before long, vindicates the wisdom of his treatment, in its clusters of varied fragrance and beauty. So also, at times, does our heavenly Gardener see fit to use His pruning-knife! But be assured that there is not one superfluous or redundant lopping. We shall understand and acknowledge an infinitely wise necessity for all–when the plant has unfolded itself into the full flower, bathed in the tints and diffusing the fragrance of Heaven.

I don’t have a verse that proves that this is what God is doing.  But it certainly seems reasonable that God could be giving out cancer to one believer and family trials to another in order to create for himself a beautiful variety of flowers in his eternal garden.  Perhaps this is not the fact of the matter.  But if it helps me to trust him, this analogy seems to me to be worthwhile (since whatever he is doing is infinitely wise and infinitely good and therefore worthy of trust).