When thinking about life, most people have a mental picture of their future. We imagine how things will unfold—the milestones we’ll celebrate, the challenges we’ll overcome, the dreams we’ll accomplish. Whether it’s parenthood, marriage, career, or health, we carry expectations about how our story should go.
Then reality arrives, and the gap between expectation and experience can be staggering.
The Question We All Ask
In John chapter 8, Jesus encounters a man born blind. Immediately after noticing him, the disciples ask a question that reveals something deeply human: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
They’re looking for an explanation. They want to know who’s responsible. They need to make sense of suffering.
Sound familiar?
When life takes an unexpected turn—a diagnosis we never anticipated, a relationship that falls apart, a body that betrays us, or a child who struggles in ways we can’t fix—we ask similar questions. What did I do wrong? Could I have prevented this? Is this punishment for something? Am I enough to handle what’s ahead?
These questions reveal our desperate need to understand, to control, and to find someone or something to blame.
Jesus Refuses to Play the Blame Game
But Jesus redirects the conversation.
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus says, shifting the focus entirely. While the disciples look backward, asking, “Why did this happen?” Jesus looks forward, asking, “Where is God in this suffering, and how can God help?”
This opens the possibility of a profound shift in our thinking. Jesus refuses to treat suffering as evidence of divine punishment. He won’t let pain serve as proof of God’s absence.
Instead, he shows that God is actively present amid suffering—not distant, not aloof, not waiting for us to say the right prayer before finally noticing our tears.
Jesus understands that we live, breathe, move, and have our very existence in God (Acts 17:28). Nothing we experience, including deep suffering, is lost on God. God is in it with us.
The Paradox of Power and Weakness
The apostle Paul discovered this truth in a deeply personal way. In 2 Corinthians, he describes what he calls “a thorn in the flesh,” an unspecified source of suffering that caused him great pain. He begged God three times to remove it.
Three times, God said no.
Instead, God said something that sounds almost contradictory: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
We misunderstand power. We think of it as control, domination, the ability to magically (or violently) make things the way we want them. With this view of power, we insist that God work miracles to remove our suffering, fix our problems, and restore normalcy.
But God’s response reveals a different kind of power—one that shows up not when we’re strong and in control, but precisely when we realize we’re not.
God’s grace—God’s loving presence and power—becomes most visible and transformative in the places where we’re most aware of our weakness. As long as we’re denying our weakness, clinging to control, and trying to handle everything ourselves, we’re not making room for God’s power to work in our suffering.
When we finally let go and accept our vulnerability, God’s power enters and makes us strong. Like most truths in Christianity, this is a paradox that turns our understanding of strength upside down.
Grace Looks Like One More Step
For most of us, God’s power doesn’t manifest as a miraculous removal of suffering. Instead, it shows up as:
- Strength for one more task
- Patience for one more difficult conversation
- Wisdom for one more hard decision
- Love for one more challenging moment
- The ability to simply put one foot in front of the other
There are days when we grow weary of doing good. When problems come at us faster than we can absorb them. When following Jesus doesn’t seem any easier. When we just want to scream or give up.
But grace appears as the ability to keep moving forward, to keep doing the next right thing, even when we’re exhausted.
Suffering Changes How We See
When we hang on and remain faithful during times of suffering, it can change how we see the world. This is something a friend of mine with a special-needs daughter discovered while spending time at the park. One ordinary day, as she pushed her daughter on a swing, she was overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. Because of her daughter’s developmental delays, simply sitting upright in the swing by herself felt extraordinary. Nearby, she overheard another mother complain that it was boring to keep doing this task.
In that moment, my friend realized that suffering had changed how she saw the world. Things others overlooked had become precious, and things others rushed past had become sacred. What once seemed ordinary now felt extraordinary.
Suffering taught her to slow down, be present, let go of the illusion of control, and live one day at a time.
How God Sees Us
Perhaps most beautifully, this mother realized something profound about how God sees all of us.
When she watches her daughter struggle, learning slowly and celebrating small victories, her primary feeling isn’t disappointment or frustration. It’s tenderness, compassion, and delight. She doesn’t see failure; she sees courage, persistence, and beauty. She sees someone worthy of love simply because she’s her child.
And this is how God sees us.
I once read a story about a mother in a pediatrician’s office with her disabled daughter in a wheelchair. While others in the waiting room glanced uncomfortably and looked away, this mother was completely unconcerned with everyone else. She leaned close to her daughter, smiled warmly, and began singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
She wasn’t embarrassed. She wasn’t worried about what others thought. She was simply present, tender, and loving. She adored this precious child.
God is great, wise, and perfect. We, however, often fail, make messes, struggle, worry, hurt the people we love, and sometimes flail in ways we don’t understand and can’t control. Yet God doesn’t look at us with disappointment. God doesn’t recoil in frustration. Rather, God stoops down to our level, looks us in the eye, smiles, and whispers, “It’s okay. I love you, and I am right here with you.”
You Don’t Have to Be Enough
These kinds of stories help us realize a liberating truth: God never asks us to be enough. God asks us to trust the One who is enough.
And there’s a big difference.
The promise of Scripture isn’t that we’ll always feel strong, confident, or happy. It isn’t that life will be easy or that every prayer will be answered exactly as we hope.
The promise is that God will be with us, that God will sustain us, that God will continue shaping us through both our joys and our weaknesses, and that, through it all, God will lead us forward.
Grace meets us where our strength runs out.
Sacred Ground
If you’re carrying a burden today that no one else can see—if you’re exhausted, worried, maybe even scared—hear this promise: God is not absent from your struggle. God is present within it.
Every act of love you offer amid difficulty matters more than you know. Every sleepless night, every difficult conversation, every appointment, every sacrifice, every prayer, every small victory—it’s all sacred ground.
The life you have may not be the one you planned, but God is present right here, right now, in it all.
And because God is present, your suffering can become a place of grace, transformation, and even unexpected beauty.
Continue the Journey
Faith is not just something we believe. It’s something we practice.
If this article was meaningful to you, I invite you to take the next step by exploring the companion 5-Day Devotional, designed to help you reflect on Scripture, deepen your faith, and put these ideas into practice throughout the week.
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Pastor Mark Reynolds is the author of the forthcoming book What Christians Do: Living Like Jesus in a Divided World (October 2026), exploring practical ways Christians can embody the character and teachings of Jesus in today’s world.
Pastor Mark Reynolds 