I finished Thunderhead, a novel by Mary O'Hara, Author of My Friend Flicka (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, PA. 1943). I still like me some horsie books. This one got very philosophical. Ken, the owner of Thunderhead who is the son of Flicka, has to grow up and learn that things don't always go perfectly. Only, of course the book ends with everything being in place. It didn't end the way I thought it would, though, which is a good thing or I might have had to kick it. An excerpt from page 113-114:

"Why do all the horrible things have to happen?" he asked passionately.

Why indeed? She was silent. How to explain. What to explain. The problem of human suffering and evil - over against God's love and power, the problem that begins and ends every theological discussion and disconcerts the ignorant and wise alike. She had been pondering it in church last Sunday, coming to a conclusion of a sort, a faltering, doubtful explanation; that, in the final act of creation by which a human being must be endowed with God-like free will, there can so easily be a time when he seizes his power and uses it wrongly; sows evil and reaps it, before he grows mature enough, wise enough, good enough, to know that free will must always be good will - else disaster follows.

"Why, Mother?"

Of course you can see the faulty logic there, but that's prolly the way lots of people think about it. We don't get good enough. Or maybe we could. If we let God change us, then we can get better, but if we just keep trying on our own, then we just keep on going down that hill. But bad things will still happen 'cause we're in this world that already got messed up a long time ago. Disaster follows.