Gospel

Mark 8:22-26

When Jesus and his disciples arrived at Bethsaida,

people brought to him a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.

He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village.

Putting spittle on his eyes he laid his hands on the man and asked,

“Do you see anything?”

Looking up the man replied, “I see people looking like trees and walking.”

Then he laid hands on the man’s eyes a second time and he saw clearly;

his sight was restored and he could see everything distinctly.

Then he sent him home and said, “Do not even go into the village.”

Reflection

If you look at the miracles that are recorded in Scripture. Realizing there were many more that happened. But the majority of the healings in the Scripture are about healing people's vision. He wants us to see, and we've been spending time in Mark these days by looking at him constantly, wanting so much for the people that he's talking to,

working with, longing to heal. He wants them to understand, and that is a way of seeing, not just looking, but seeing what's real. And I love the fact that he does this miracle just for the benefit of this man, not for the crowd, not to prove anything. He takes him by the hand to a private place, does the miracle for him, and then gives him the most poignant advice.

You can't go back to where you were. Don't even go into the village. What you have seen, they will not understand. What you now know, they will not accept.

Closing Prayer

Father, you have a message for everyone. And there are times when you spoke with 500 or, look at all the people that you fed bread, the 4000, the 5000. But this passage so clearly talks about the intimacy between ourselves and God. God living in the flesh in Jesus doing intimate things for us, private things for us. So bless us with an awareness and openness to the mysterious ways in which you converse, that you touch our lives, and you radically change us. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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