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God never promised us a rose garden

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  (1 Peter 4.12-14 https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
What is the fiery ordeal to which the writer refers? Given that Peter is believed to have perished during Nero’s persecution after a great fire in Rome, people have often wondered whether it relates to a passage in an account of the persecution by the historian Tacitus, who was a boy at the time of the fire.
He wrote, "Therefore, to stop the rumour [that he had set Rome on fire], he [Emperor Nero] falsely charged with guilt, and punished with the most fearful tortures, the persons commonly called Christians… Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.’
Some things about this account have caused historians to wonder how accurate it is. To begin with, there weren’t many Christians in Rome at this time. We only have copies of the text that were made much later by Christian scribes and people have wondered whether, influenced by the passage in 1 Peter, they inserted explicit references to Jesus and to Christanity into an account that was originally about the persecution of minorities belonging to other faiths too. And then, while burning people is certainly a fearful way to torture them, it isn’t a very good way to create illumination.
Whether the fiery ordeal actually involved setting people alight or was just a very difficult test of their faith, the writer says this type of thing shouldn’t surprise us. We should expect to be ‘reviled for the name of Christ’, (which does suggest a link with actual persecution), and we should ‘rejoice insofar as [we] are sharing Christ’s sufferings.’
This doesn’t mean deliberately provoking confrontation or rejoicing in being a doormat for Christ. It does mean accepting, to quote the Country Music song, that in life - and the Christian life in particular - God has ‘never promised [us] a rose garden’.

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