that the works of God might be displayed

I (Maddy) am camped at the MSP airport, where I was dropped off early, expecting to be joined by the team in a few hours but in the meantime savoring this time to take deep breaths of God's goodness. Here's one:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him." John 9:1-3

I flipped open my Bible a few nights ago and my eyes lit on that sentence of Jesus'. I was reminded of the fears that many of us shared at our last team meeting: We're afraid that we've done things wrong, or that we will do things wrong, and we're anxious to figure out what those mistakes are and how to fix them, living meanwhile in uneasy anticipation of the dreadful effects of our failures. "I'm constantly looking for the leak in my boat," Alli said. "But the problem with that is, once you start looking for leaks, you won't find one; you'll find a hundred."

"Who sinned?" asked the disciples.
Wrong question.

That's what we reminded each other at that meeting--a simple message, one of those easily articulable truths that have the power to transform us if we only believe. God is the worker. He's about displaying his perfection and sufficiency, not exposing our gaps. There's a strong connection between humility and joy. This adventure is not about our own strengths, and it's not about our weaknesses, either. Pride credits its own strengths with things that go right, and its own failures with things that go wrong. The reality is, we're very small beings called to obedience in a story much greater than we can perceive fully, told by one much greater than we can grasp. Singing out our own few God-given lines with abandoned gusto is a much more exciting (and God-glorifying) place to be than floundering in a backstage control room whose buttons we can't reach, or apologizing for our every stammer on stage. We're free, children of God, consecrated bearers of the light of the world. When things go wrong and when things go right, we can know that our God is displaying his works.

That fills me with joy right down to my wriggling toes.

"As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." John 9:5