I was thinking about how adversities in our life are more common than ever. It seems like around every corner something comes up in our lives that seem to take us off the path we want to go. It could be a phone call, a letter, an email, accident, something to do with a family member or an answer to a health test that was not good. Whatever it is it disrupts your whole life. How do you react to these adversities? How do you respond?
I think for most of us we initially think the worst. We become anxious and begin to place all of our focus on what it wrong. Does this sound like you? We begin asking questions like, “Who’s to blame?” are “How did this happen?” And pretty soon we fall into the trap of how can I ever be happy again? And nothing good can come from this, which moves us to, what is the point in continuing. These are some of our natural reactions when these adversities come our way. Our first reaction is to focus on what went wrong. Even the disciples of Jesus reacted the same way. In John 9:1-3 it tells of a time this happened…
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 you can see, the disciples first reaction was to focus on what is wrong when they asked Jesus, “who sinned, this man or his parents.” The disciples were so eager to find out why this happened they forgot they were standing right in front of the man who was blind. How awkward that must have been for the blind man to hear them talking about him. Doesn’t this sound like something we might say? But Jesus knowing the disciples were focused on the wrong thing said, “neither this man or his parents sinned.” And then followed it up with the key to understanding how God can make something beautiful of any adversity when he says, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
If you read the rest of the story you know that Jesus heals the man, but this is not what the story is about. It is about God being displayed in you through any circumstance. You see, God sometimes doesn’t change your circumstance, but wants to be seen in it. This is the key that unlocks the beauty that is found in this passage. When you begin to focus on what is going wrong in your life and not what God is doing right we lose sight of this beauty at work. What I’ve learned is that my idea of making something right, might not be God’s idea of making something right.