John 9:2-3 “’Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ Jesus said, ‘but his happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’”

Sometimes people suffer because they are victims. Maybe the blind man the disciples noticed was a victim. It was all mom and dad’s fault. Apparently it’s not just a modern tendency to think, “It’s my parents’ fault I turned out this way.”

There are legitimate cases of children being victimized by their parents’ bad behavior, (though maybe not so much as a matter of God’s supernatural intervention as the disciples proposed here). Fetal alcohol syndrome, cocaine babies, and various psychological traumas caused by bad parenting are all real things.

Shall we be careful, however, about needing to make every tragedy someone’s fault? If we do find ourselves a victim, how much do we want to dwell on that? We live in a broken world run by broken people. There are victims in all directions. Feeling sorry for ourselves, throwing a pity party and inviting everyone to come, doesn’t serve a positive purpose. This grows out of the sinful flesh, not the new man of faith. Jesus wants to help us get past the problems and see our circumstances his way.

Here, that meant considering this man’s blindness may have been intended by God to serve a spiritual purpose. “This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

Is that possible? Could God have actually willed and caused this man’s blindness for his own purposes? That is what Jesus is saying. This blindness happened for a purpose, and that purpose was so that God could do his work.

Does that comfort or scare you? I once counseled with a couple in which the husband had had a heart attack. Years of heart-health problems followed. They always resisted the idea that this setback in life could have come from God. It felt to them as though that would be accusing him of doing evil. No, the heart attack had to come from the devil.

What they failed to consider were all the good things that had happened in their relationship, their family, and their life of witness to neighbors and medical workers as a result of the health issues. Yes, he suffered as a result of the experience. But God used it to draw husband and wife closer in faith. He used it as a platform from which these godly people could talk about the gospel.

That’s God’s work, his saving work. It fits his gracious promise: “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).