Daily Lesson for February 17, 2014

Today's Lesson is from John 9:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."

Yesterday I spent time with a Sunday School class talking about suffering and pain and why these things exist. There was a young woman in the class whose son has significantly debilitating health problems. She teared up as she shared her journey with her son and the frustration of having no answers for how to treat him. Her tears took the philosophical problem of suffering and put a face on it - the face of her little boy. This was a constant reminder to me of how feeble words can be when it comes to asking the deepest and most personal questions. They were a reminder that there are no easy answers.

When asked why a man suffered from birth, Jesus didn't give an easy answer. Most people assumed either the man or his parents did something to deserve his being born blind. This was the standard theology of the day. But Jesus refused that theology. Jesus also refused all the other easy, glib answers about why God might have made the man blind. Neither here, nor anywhere else, did Jesus ever say, "God never gives us more than we can handle." In fact, Jesus outright rejected the idea that God is the one who causes suffering and pain. 

In this chaotic world, it is often easier to think that God causes suffering than it is to think that there is some other unknown and uncontrollable reason or unreason. But Jesus tells us not to be troubled by allowing the unknown remain unknown. What he did know was this - that in the midst of the difficult lives of those who suffer God is at work. He reframed the whole conversation - refocusing it from one about the origin of suffering to one about God's presence in and through suffering. Jesus was saying, if you want to see the work of God, don't look at suffering itself, look instead at the remarkable lives that are lived in spite of suffering.

As we shared in the classroom yesterday, this mother began to speak of the character of her son which has come out - his kindness and compassion. "He doesn't complain," she said. "And he thinks so much of others. He still prays for the victims of the Boston marathon bombings and for the family who lost their house in a fire last year. He is so Godly."

Philosophies, and theologies, and glib answers all fail. Why this boy suffers remains unknown; but the works of God in and through his life are clearly seen.