Mark 8:22-25 Then He came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to Him, and begged Him to touch him. So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes and put His hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything. And he looked up and said, “I see men like trees, walking.” Then He put His hands on his eyes again and made him look up. And he was restored and saw everyone clearly.
- Reflect On: Mark 8:22-25 & John 9:1-3
- Praise God: Because there are no shadows in Him.
- Offer Thanks: For the ways Jesus continues to reveal Himself to you.
- Confess: Any tendency to ignore the difficult teachings of Christ.
- Ask God: To open your eyes to your need for grace.
Hundreds of years ago, St. Augustine commented on our tendency to miss the deeper meaning of the miracles, advising believers to “ask the miracles themselves what they tell us about Christ, for they have a tongue of their own, if it can only be understood. Because Christ is the Word of God, all the acts of the Word become words to us. The miracle which we admire on the outside also has something inside which must be understood.”
If Jesus is our Rabbi, surely he teaches us not only through His parables and sayings but also through His actions. Take the incident in Mark’s gospel in which Jesus gradually heal a blind mind. But why couldn’t Jesus get the job done with a single touch? Didn’t He have the power? The answer may lie, not in any lack of divine power but in a lack of human readiness. Perhaps Jesus healed the blind man in stages in order to reveal a deeper point—to show us that our own healing often happens in stages as well.
To be converted to Christ is first of all to be healed of our spiritual blindness—but not completely. We are still only half-seeking, only partially perceiving the truth about God and about us. Knowing we can only bear so much light, Jesus never forces us to see the whole truth but only enables us to see it as we are willing and able. Despite our faith, most of us still resist the gospel at some level. We tolerate and sometimes even cherish the shadows precisely because the GOOD NEWS is also bad news for the sins we still harbor—our pride, pettiness, and greed.
Today as you ponder the miracle of how Christ healed the blind man from Bethsaida, ask Him to touch the eyes of your soul so that they may open wide to the truth of the gospel. Pray for the faith to see and the grace to learn.
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