“Do you see anything?” Jesus asked.
“I see people; they look like trees walking around,” the previously blind man said.
In Mark 8:22-26, some people brought a blind man for Jesus to heal. He put his spit on the man’s eyes, and he could partly see. At first it seems a little underwhelming, like maybe Jesus could only partly fix what ailed the man. But Jesus didn’t do anything by accident.
At first, the man can only see people, and only their shapes. He can’t see their details, their faces. The question that comes to mind is this: do we see people any better than the now half-blind man? Are they any more to us than just figures filling a space? I hope so, but there is a great deal of data about Christian’s behavior and giving patterns to suggest that for many believers, we don’t see people any better than this half-blind man.
So in this moment between blindness and perfect sight, Jesus allows there to be a tension. Meeting Jesus has allowed him to see better, but he’s still not really seeing. He’s still missing something about what it means to see God at work, to see people and ourselves as God sees them and us.
So Jesus touches the man’s eyes again. “Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”
We have a great many things lingering out there somewhere in our future. As individuals, we have tough decisions we’ve been putting off, we have upcoming financial crises and health crises, and heartaches. And as a church, we have opportunities, both missed opportunities and unrealized opportunities God has yet to send our way. Opportunities to be a part of dynamic life-changes. And all those things lingering out in our future, they’re hard to see.
We can’t yet imagine what our church will be like in a few months when we dedicate a new building. We can’t yet imagine what our church will be like when we are called upon to reach the wider needs in our county and even some this Summer out of the country on another mission trip to Mexico. We can’t yet see those things. They’re blurry, out of focus.
All the future events you face, and all the future events we face, we know they’re out there somewhere, but we’re going to be walking into them blind. That is why it’s time to ask Jesus to touch us again. It’s time to be exposed to a Christ-centered focus in as many worship services and Bible study classes and small groups as we can. And it’s time to ask Jesus to touch us again through becoming a praying people, the kinds of people who talk and walk with God as the central focal point around which our life is ordered, not as an afterthought. We need better sight to catch the vision. So ask Jesus to touch your eyes again this month, and draw closer to him. Let’s get ready for what’s coming that we haven’t yet seen or imagined.
In His Love,
Bro. Joseph