Healing a man born blind

“As He went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’” John 9:1-2
In the time of Jesus, there wasn’t the welfare system that we have in Western society today, where someone with a disability such as blindness can receive financial help from the government. In those days, if you had a disability, you would usually be reduced to begging on the street and hoping that people would take pity on you and help you out. In places like Jerusalem, there were busy places where such people congregated. It was not unusual to see people sitting beside the road, begging. It was easy for the disciples to look at this man born blind and use his misery to ask Jesus a theological question that had been bugging them: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
There were two schools of thought, both stemming from the notion that if bad things happened to you, it was the result of some previous sin. For a man who was born blind, this posed a difficulty. Some rabbis taught that a person could sin while in the womb. Others taught that parents’ sin could be passed to their children (despite Ezek. 18:20 and other passages).
Jesus answers that neither is the case (John 9:3), but, He says, “so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (John 9:3). The man and his parents were not more wicked sinners than anyone else. But God had a special plan for this man, and it involved him being blind for a time so that he might be healed. The work of God would open this man’s eyes, and through that healing the man became a great witness to others (see the rest of John 9).
If you have some disability, or know someone who does, take heart: God allows these things to happen for a reason, and all these reasons have a common factor: that He might be glorified through it. I don’t know how, or when, He will do it; but we can rest assured that He knows what He is doing.