When you learn a new game—maybe a card game or board game—it can take a while before you fully understand it. The first time it is explained to you, you begin to understand, but not fully, not right away.

Discipleship is like that. It involves a learning process of coming to know who Jesus is and what he came to do.

Today’s story about healing a man from blindness is a parable of sorts that also teaches us about discipleship. It is a curious story because usually when Jesus heals someone, it is like hitting a home run in baseball—you can run all the way around the bases on one hit. But in this story the healing is done in two stages. It goes part of the way at first, like a hit that gets you halfway around the bases—and then another hit gets the job done. Why is that?

The disciples were beginning to catch on to who Jesus was, and it’s as if Jesus were asking them, “Do you see anything?” Well, they did see in part, but they were still not sure that they understood Jesus fully. And that is understandable because we are only halfway through the gospel of Mark.

We are at the midpoint of the book of Mark, and it’s a good place to gauge how well we see Jesus, because there is much more to come. The first half is mostly about who Jesus is, and the second half will be about what he came to do.