Today’s Reading: Mark 8:11-38
Don’t you just love to have the time to take a walk in the park and see all of God’s creation in a peaceful setting? There’s just something about it that calms the spirit and helps us to realize just how big and loving our God truly is. One of the things that I like to look at in the park is all the different kinds of trees. In today’s reading, we read about one of the miracles that Jesus performed where the man said: “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
We see that he was blind, Jesus touched him, and he got vision but that vision wasn’t clear. Then Jesus touched him again and everything became clear.
Helen Adams Keller (June 27,1880–June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deaf/blind person to graduate from college. She was once asked is there anything which is worse than being blind, she wisely answered: “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
There are a lot of people who have lost their vision. There are a lot of people who don’t know where they are going. Maybe you have lost your job, maybe your marriage has broken up, maybe you didn’t meet your grades and right now you are in the transition period of your life. Maybe you have just lost a loved one, a family member and are struggling why? Why were they taken, and you left behind? There are so many things which can happen to us in life to shake our confidence.
The Bible says the man could see, but he saw people like trees. ‘I’ve been touched, I can see, but I can’t see clearly. My vision is foggy, my vision is not certain and is a little bit misty. Suddenly Jesus did something, which we don’t read anywhere else in scripture: he touched him a second time. There is a second touch!
This man was touched and giving sight, he could have happily said nothing, and spent the rest of his life with unclear vision (but vision non-the-less). If that had been a lot of Christians after God had touched them for the first time, they would have said ‘I have been touched, I am satisfied, and I will spend the rest of my life with unclear vision.
However, he had a hunger for more, and he got the second touch! The second touch made him whole!
Reflection
Are you happy just with a touch or are you going to allow him to change you and make you whole?