“Why did the light turn green and then turn red?” “Why are the other two fan ventilators spinning but the far left one stops spinning?” As I walked my 3-old-year son back home, every once in a while he would stop his tiny kid’s bike and ask many “why” questions, some of which I couldn’t know to how to answer or even have a clue, so what I could do is just pretend I didn’t hear it or ignore his questions sometimes. Like my son, we do have many “life” questions and we don’t know how to figure them out, particularly those related to personal misfortunes or social injustice, “How could such a nice person suffer incurable diseases or discriminations?” We have many “whys” in our head, but neglect a key issue behind the “why” question; that is—what I should tackle the problem.

In John 9, we read that while Jesus was walking down the street, he met a man who was born blind sitting by. The disciples of Jesus came up to him asking, “Who sinned so as to cause this man to be born blind, the man’s parents or the man himself?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life,” replied Jesus as he went on to encourage his disciples to work for the kingdom of God “as long as it is day “ (v.4). Once again Jesus reaffirmed himself as the light of the world, “whoever believes in him will never walks in the darkness.” Then he healed the blind man’s eyes and his vision returned to normal.

Instead of asking a cause-and-effect question, Jesus was looking for what he could do for this blind man; Instead of playing a blame game, Jesus sought to solve the problem, how he could do to help the blind man and to demonstrate the glory of God. There are always troubles and problems here and there, but let’s not ask the wrong question as if Jesus’ disciples did. Rather we ask him to work with us to become problem solvers.