Prayers to God in the midst of suffering

In John chapter 9, there is an account of Jesus and his disciples amidst a crowd of people. The disciples saw a blind man, and asked who was responsible for the man’s affliction; him or his parents. The religious and cultural norms of the time led to the belief that his lack of vision was a form of condemnation from God. Even today, there are presumptions about physical conditions based on past behavior. Modern medicine has taught us the correlations between smoking and lung cancer, fatty foods and heart disease, high risk sports and broken bones, excessive alcohol consumption and hangovers, etc. 

Jesus healing the blind man directly challenges a wholesale assumption of adversity and judgment. When the disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” they were articulating a common theological framework—one that equates personal hardship with divine punishment. Jesus immediately dismantled that framework. His response was clear: the man’s blindness was not the result of sin, but an opportunity for the works of God to be displayed. His correction shifted the conversation from blame to purpose, from judgment to revelation.

What makes this moment so significant is not just the miracle, but how this lesson completely changed the cultural paradigm of God’s character. 

Jesus refuses to allow the man’s identity to be reduced to a moral failing. Instead, He elevated the situation into something redemptive for a greater cause. The blindness, while undeniably difficult, was not evidence of rejection—it was a context in which God’s power and authority would be revealed. This disrupts the often simplistic cause-and-effect narrative that our suffering equals condemnation. 

If you are walking through a season of emotional or spiritual darkness, this passage provides critical perspective. While contradictory to its emotional effect, being depressed does not mean being abandoned. It does not equate to divine disapproval. The blind man’s story teaches us that God’s posture toward us in our suffering is not one of judgment, but of intentional use for His purpose. What may feel like silence or absence can be the very space where God is preparing to reveal His work most clearly. The very purpose of Jesus’s time on earth–redemption–can be how God is using our affliction for the sake of others because we are His disciples.