OUR LORD'S SPECIAL MIRACLE OF SIGHT

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.  - Mark 8 verse 22 - 25.

This breath-taking account of Jesus giving a man his vision is a window into the mechanisms of healing that Jesus had access to. 

In this particular case, the man was profoundly blind to the degree that his eyes could not function and on top of that, his brain could not interpret images.

When the blind man was brought to Him, the people were asking Jesus to touch Him. Normally, a  touch from Jesus was probably enough to heal most ailments (for example, the woman with the issue of blood merely touched Jesus' coat and was healed), but Jesus knew there was a complexity involved in this case that needed special conditions to correct the man's blindness.

There were five distinct steps that Jesus undertook to complete this miracle:

The first thing Jesus did was take the man by the hand and lead him out of town. As well as to make the miracle a discreet event, this was to take him out of the confusing and unnatural setting of the city and into a simpler backdrop of the countryside that would facilitate the reconstruction of the man's mental mapping between visual objects and their attendant meanings.

The second step was that Jesus spit into the man's eyes. This is an unusual action but not entirely unique.  It is recorded that Jesus used spit to heal blindness in another miracle told  in John 9 verse 6 where Jesus made mud with spit and clay and placed the mixture on a man's eyes. 

In this case however, Jesus spat directly into the man's eyes. The spit itself may be seen as a component of healing in several ways. In the same way a mother may use her spit to clean her child's face before receiving company, the spit may have been used as a cleaner to prepare a suitably clear surface for the miracle to take place.  Alternatively,  the spit may have provided some molecular scaffolding on which the healing miracle could occur. Perhaps the spit served both these functions.

The third step was that Jesus laid his hands on the man. This step is a commonly seen action taken to actualize miracles. In many cases, Jesus and His apostles laid their hands on sick or disabled people and they were healed. This step was probable the way that miraculous power was conferred to the man to initialize his healing.

The fourth step is that Jesus asked the man if he could see anything. This question is very revealing.  This man's case of blindness was complex enough that it was necessary to perform the restorative  miracle in stages. The question was a diagnostic tool to verify what stage of healing the  man had reached. The man looked up and replied, "I see men like trees walking".

This response is extraordinary.  The man, in responding to Jesus' question, described his visual experience as one where he could see men but he saw them like trees walking. 

Remember that Jesus had led this man discreetly into the countryside and so what was all around him were trees and a few people who had brought him to Jesus. In his visual cortex, the man was now perceiving trees and men when he looked up but his brain was blending the perception of trees and men  and interpreting these blended items as a man/ tree hybrid  and he thus exclaimed, "I see men like trees walking."

Upon receiving this response, Jesus carried out step five where He laid His hands on the man's eyes again and when Jesus got him to look up, the man's vision was restored.

The progression of events in this narrative  gives us insight into the workings of a miracle where the stages are slowed down enough for us to see how distinct stages of healing are completed before successive stages are undertaken.

Whereas other miracles done by Jesus are recorded as single events, it is reasonable to understand that most healings would necessarily be procedural in nature but the healing miracles are conducted swiftly and seamlessly and written about as single events.

Here,  a special case of a staged healing  was allowed for the sake of letting us gain insight into the powers that Jesus and His followers wielded as they went about healing the sick.

Bless the name of the Lord.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO CARES FOR US

Our Lord Jesus deeply treasures those who believe in Him.  These are the ones who gain salvation by trusting in Jesus' ability to save us through His death on a cross in our place.

He cares for those who have counted on Him to wrest them out of darkness and lift them into His kingdom of light.

In 1 Peter 5 verse 6 - 7, God's care for us is framed like this:

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. 

God's care for us is such that we are to cast our anxieties upon Him for we must have confidence in His attentive concern for us and we must know that nothing escapes His notice.

Whatever fear or worry we carry, we are charged to off-load it into His care and we can live wholly for His Kingdom unencumbered by the matters in our lives that He takes care of on our behalf.

Praise the name of the Lord.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO BOUGHT US AT A PRICE

In 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 19 - 20, it says:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 

For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. 

This exortation to holiness references the high price that was paid to bring us out of darkness into light.

As it says in Psalm 49 verse 7 - 8 regarding the costliness of salvation: 

Even those who trust in their wealth And boast in the abundance of their riches? No man can by any means redeem his brother Or give to God a ransom for him—For the redemption of his soul is costly, And he should cease trying forever— 

This verse tells us that saving a single soul is extremely costly such that no man, even though rich, could redeem his brother and  even with an eternity of trying, one man could never save the soul of another person.

We have only one path of salvation, the path provided by the Lord Jesus Christ.  The eternal and perfect God was the only person who could afford the price to redeem us from darkness and this price was His death on a cross which He willingly took on to save us.

Bless the Lord our God.

Amen.

OUR LORD KNEW US BEFORE WE WERE

The Lord our God knew us before we were born and before we even existed. As it says in Psalm 139 verse 15-16:

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

The scriptures also say that our God chose us before the foundation of the world.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.  Ephesians 1 verse 3 - 4.

The Lord our God also predestined us for His purpose meaning that He not only knew us, He not only chose us but He also had a plan for us. 

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, - Ephesians 1 verse 11.

Praise and honour be to our Lord who knows the end from the beginning.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO INDWELLS US

The most astonishing part of the mechanics of salvation is that it involves the indwelling of the Most High God in us.

The Lord our God purposed to save people from our sins and He paid for our sins by dying on a cross in our place.

Our God then ascended to heaven where He was crowned as King of kings and Lord of lords.

He then sent His Holy Spirit to live in our newly reborn spirits that are made alive when we cross from death to life by the salvation that we gain through belief in Jesus and His power to save us.

Our spirits are entwined and  mingled with the Spirit of God inside of us and the life of God animates us as we subject ourselves to Him.

The Salvation of God gives us the unimaginable privilege of having the Holy Spirit of God being with us forever. As it says in John14 verse 15 - 17:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. - John 14 verse 15 -17.

This is the same Spirit of God who hovered over the surface of the waters at the very start of creation. 

That passage goes like this:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. - Genesis 1 verse 1 - 2.

The mind-warping actions that the Spirit of God was accomplishing to bring creation into being at that time are beyond human comprehension, but He, in all that power and might, is also the one who gently and patiently guides us in the path of rightness with God. He also brings us utterance of unknown tongues and with grace and tenderness, bring healing to demonstrate the authority and excellence of Jesus.

Bless the God of our salvation for His plan of redemption that vastly exceeds our ability to imagine.

Amen.

OUR LORD THE RIGHTFUL KING OF ALL

Our Lord Jesus, though born into the life of a man and subject to all the frailties and weaknesses of men, did not at any one single time commit a sin. His entire life proved Him to be perfect. Before the courts of men and before the courts of the spirit, no fault was found in Him.

That means that every one of Jesus'  thoughts and words and deeds were acceptable in the sight of  God and were perfect before the law of men and of God.

Having conducted His perfect life in the sight of a cloud of witnesses, Jesus demonstrated why He was the rightful ruler of Zion and why the great  throne of heaven was given to Him by right and by merit.

Praise the great King of heaven and earth.

Amen.

OUR LORD WHO DISCIPLINES US

In the book of Hebrews chapter 12 verse 9 - 11, the scriptures contrast the good discipline we got from our earthly fathers that we benefitted from with the perfect discipline with which the Lord our God  corrects us for our good.

The passage goes like this:

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 

For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. -Hebrews 12 verse 9 -11.

Our earthly fathers, being limited, corrected us as best they knew how to our gain but God, knowing all things,  disciplines us with precision and we benefit eternally from it.

Let us cheerfully and humbly accept the discipline of our Lord and God for even though we may find it hard to withstand, we are the beneficiaries of His work in us and we are brought into righteousness and peace.

Amen.