The Why Behind the Circumstance

"Mommy? Mommy!" 

It's three o'clock in the morning, and my youngest is standing next to my bed where I'd flopped beneath the covers only a few hours before, having just arrived back from our Christmas celebratory wanderings. I glance at the clock and try not to groan: Three hours of sleep. And I have to go to work today.

"Mommy, I'm scared. I can't sleep."

So I pull back the covers and my daughter crawls in and wedges me next to my husband, and she tells me all about an ill-advised movie she's seen over the weekend (a bad judgment call on the part of my husband and me and one I think we're going to keep regretting) where some scary images have festered in her mind. "Mommy, why can't I stop thinking about it? Why can't I stop being scared?"

I'm sleepy and hardly in the mood to listen and comfort and discuss as I watch the minutes tick toward my up-coming alarm, but I do. I pray with her and ask Jesus to cover over those images, to wash away the power that those images have in her mind, and to replace them with images of His face, His Name, and His peace. I quietly sing an old song, careful not to wake my husband: "Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace." 

When my alarm rings an hour later, I haven't slept and my daughter is still stirring restlessly. I'm tempted to turn off the alarm and try to get some more rest, but the odds of that happening with three in the bed are quite small. So I get up and decide it will be a two-cup-of-coffee kind of day.

Here I sit now, reading John 9:1-12. It's the beginning of a story about a man who is blind from birth. He's never seen anything, not even once, and Jesus passes by the place where he's begging. The disciples notice the man. "Teacher," they ask, "who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

See, there is this idea that has developed over time (seen quite prevalently in the book of Job) that if one is suffering or disabled, it must be the result of some sin. It is equivalent to the more modern-day form of the question: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" 

The idea that sickness, blindness, infirmity, disease, or tragedy as a repayment for sin has become a widespread and accepted belief, and it seems to frustrate Jesus. He addresses it in at least two places. In Luke 13:1-5, we find an incident that has happened where some people from Galilee have made sacrifices in the temple and are killed by Pilate, the Roman governor, for reasons at which we can only guess. 

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Jesus says: "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no!"

Here in John 9, He says something similar in response to His disciples' question: "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," says Jesus. They're not perfect; of course they've sinned at some point in their lives - "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). What Jesus means is that the sins this man and his parents have committed are not what have caused the blindness. 

"But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Because God's doing something. He's doing something in your life! In my life! I don't know about you, but that makes me super excited. Even when, maybe especially when, I don't understand why those bad things are happening, when I can't point to the root cause, when it doesn't seem to make any sense. 

So that the work of God might be displayed in his life, in her life.

Jesus crouches down next to the man and digs into the dirt with his fingers, squinting back up at Peter, Matthew, John, Andrew, the others who have crowded around Him and the blind guy. "As long as it is day," He says as He spits into the pile of dirt He's formed, then adds a bit more dust to make a small measure of mud, "we must do the work of Him who sent Me." He spits once more and scrapes the mud onto His hand, holding it up and looking at it with satisfaction. "Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." He grasps the blind man's bearded jaw with one hand while the other carefully smears the mud over the man's closed eyelids. 

"Go," He tells the man, "wash in the Pool of Siloam."

So Jesus and His disciples go one way and the man heads down to the Pool to do what Jesus has told Him to do. John 9:7 says: "...[he] came home seeing."

His neighbors recognize him, but there's a marked difference. Where this man formerly had to be led by the hand or possibly had to feel his way along, now he is walking with purpose and without hesitancy. He can see!

It's such a startling difference that several of the man's neighbors don't recognize him. Some of them are sure it's the same guy, some are convinced it's not. What to do when you don't know something? You go to the source.

The source, the blind man, insists: "It's me! I'm the once-blind guy!"

"How come you see now, then?" his faithless neighbors ask.

"The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see."

The man could easily have written off Jesus' instructions. He could have dismissed them as foolishness; Who puts mud on people's eyes anyway? Especially mud made with His own spit? But -- in obedience -- he left one position and moved forward into another position. A step of faith.

"Where is this Man?" his neighbors ask.

The man shrugs. "I don't know." 

Jesus has gone on His way. He's healed the man, though the man has yet to see. There's something about the timing of this that gets beneath my skin in a really good way: Jesus has healed the man before he has seen. Jesus parts from the man before the man washes the mud from his eyes. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29).

The man doesn't even know what Jesus looks like. But he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, Who healed him.

Why doesn't Jesus walk with the man to the Pool? For that matter, why doesn't Jesus wave His hand toward the man and make the man suddenly be able to see? He certainly could have. As my mom would say, "What was the method in the madness?" (Not that this was madness).

The answer lies up-story in John 9:3: "But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."

Jesus already knew about those pesky neighbors, and about the Pharisees who would question this man (tomorrow's blog that has yet to be written). He's displaying the work of God in this man's life in exactly the way it needs to happen for the man's salvation and for the witness to those who encounter this story.

This morning, my daughter wanted to know why she was scared. In the grand scheme of things, her bad dreams don't seem like a big deal, but at 3:00 a.m., January 4, 2021, they were her whole world, all she could think about. And she wondered why the bad things in her dreams had happened to her.

Now at 6:23 a.m. she's sleeping peacefully, granted, in my spot in my bed, but free of the terror that had kept her awake all night. Personally, I think it's because we begged Jesus to intervene, and He crouched down next to us, spread soothing salve on her troubled mind, and washed her in the refreshing balm of sleep.

Why? So that the work of God might be displayed in her life.

Amen. And now I'm heading out to the kitchen for that second cup of coffee. Pray for me today, y'all. Three hours of sleep is a rough beginning. By the end, though, I wonder what work of God will be displayed in my life?