By David ReayWednesday 29 Apr 2020LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (NIV)
When something goes badly wrong we reach out for some quick explanation, some answer that allows us to manage what faces us. In this episode, Jesus’ disciples follow a traditional line of reasoning. This blind man is blind because of some immediate or explicable cause. And if we can conclude it was because of some connected sin, then we can start reckoning that if we avoid that sin we can avoid that calamity.
Jesus will have nothing of this sort of quick fix, one-size-fits-all approach. Of course our actual sin can produce an actual setback: if I abuse my body I will suffer the consequences. But more often than not it is not so clear. Innocent people die without having brought it on themselves. People suffer for no apparent reason.
All death and suffering is traceable back to our original decision to go our own way and so the world is now bent, disordered. It is not as God intended it to be. But not all death and suffering is connected to our own specific sin at any given time. There are no easy answers.
We do well not to seek such answers but to remind ourselves how the works of God can be displayed in our own troubled times. To paraphrase Jesus, there is much that is dark in the world, but instead of trying to figure it out, we are to be light in that darkness. We are to spy out what God may be doing and what he may want us to be doing to lighten that darkness. If our faith can’t work in the darkness it is no faith at all.
Blessings
David