5 AM. I headed down a flight of stairs that might as well have been the black diamond slope at Telluride. My white knuckles gripped the railing as I maneuvered my way over all fourteen steps like I was jumping mogals. The recovery from knee replacement surgery is not for sissies.

My destination? A little cup of pills placed on the kitchen counter the night before. Man made those pills, and praise God for modern medicine, but God and I both knew they would not be enough for me at that moment. I needed God to make that medicine stronger and put an end to my pain. As I stood in the dim light of the kitchen, that was my short-sighted prayer.

“Lord, I need your help. What I have right now is not enough. I need you to change that. My pain is real and I have no strength left. You turned water into wine. Could you do a little something similar with these pills?”

A severe lack of sleep (a hallmark of this recovery) had made me punchy so I’m not sure how The Almighty received my spicy flair prayer, but I didn’t stop to think about that. I was desperate for an outright miracle that morning. 

I leaned against the counter like I was standing at the bar in a John Wayne western, raised my cup, and glanced up. “Here’s mud in your eye,” I stammered, and threw back the pills.

I chuckled then,  glad no one had been around to see that. (I really did need sleep.) But in my stupor, I began to ponder…

“Mud in your eye?”  Where did that come from? Surely not.
I grabbed my Bible, found the passage, and did a little research.

I was right. This toast that offers a modern day wish for good health is said to have its origins in John 9. Let me set the stage.

Jesus and his disciples, by no accident we soon find out, encounter a man that has been blind since birth. Everyone has an opinion about this beggar, but Jesus concentrates on the mission at hand, and in an unconventional manner of healing, spits on the ground, makes a clay, and rubs it in the man’s eyes. He then instructs the man to go wash in a nearby pool. When the mud is washed away the blind man receives his sight.

It’s a miraculous story filled with lots of drama and fodder for the theologians, but what spoke loudest to me on that hard morning were Jesus’ words to the crowd at the end of verse 3:

“… it was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

You see, instead of being wowed by the miracle before them, everyone chose to play the blame game and try to figure out the who, what, when, and why of this man’s predicament. Something or someone had to be responsible for his blindness, right? Do you ever play that game? I sure do.

Jesus astonishingly declares that it was God who planned this man’s hard condition for that very moment so that before all present God would be glorified through this man’s healing and the power and authority of Jesus as the Son of God would be revealed.

God can do that. He can allow hardship to enter our life for purposes far beyond our understanding. But you can be sure He always has a purpose and always has a plan for our pain.

My flair prayer that morning attempted to circumvent all of that. It was a plea to get me out of my circumstance. A quick exit out of my pain. And that’s ok. God tells us to come boldly to His throne of grace in time of trouble.

Yet, there will be times when God has greater plans, with miraculous outcomes that involve more than our immediate need. We may not understand them. They may scare us. We may even hate them. We may despise the wait and feel our suffering unfair. But when we stop concentrating on where we are, and focus on where He is taking us, it ushers in hope.

And hope can open our eyes to His sufficiency and the promise that His strength, not ours, will get us through.

Then, in His time (and it must be His time) stronger and wiser, with eyes that have learned to see the results of trust and patience in seasons of suffering, imagine our view when the mud is washed away!