“They brought a blind man to Him and begged Him to touch him” (Mark 8:22). “They brought to Him a deaf man who also had a speech difficulty, and begged Jesus to lay His hand on him” (Mark 7:32). Have you ever brought someone to Jesus in prayer and begged Him to lay His hand on him, to touch him?
There are those I love who are deaf to spiritual things. There are people who cannot see anything but the temporal reality that they are living in. When I try to share my beliefs with them, I realize that they cannot understand what I am saying, and cannot see what I’m trying to show them. I have finally realized the solution lies not only in what I say to them about God, but instead what I say to God about them. Not casual prayers, but the kind I see represented in the Gospels, passionate prayer pleading with God that He would open both eyes and ears to spiritual truths.
With both the deaf man and the blind man, Jesus led them to a private place. He took the blind man by the hand and brought him out of the village. We are called to be faithful in prayer. The definition of faith is to be sure of what you hope for and confident about what you don’t see. But I’ll be honest. I struggle with this. Sometimes I simply become discouraged by what I see, and I stop praying. Both of these miracles were performed in private, not in the presence of those who begged Jesus to touch the ones they loved.
Both of these miracles involved the very DNA of Jesus. In other words, spit. Yes, spit! Today many people are using their own spit to find out genetic information about themselves. There are many businesses that have cropped up to help people interpret the information revealed by their spit. This is something I marvel about, and don’t completely understand that Jesus used His own DNA to give both sight and hearing.
The gift of sight was a process. Again, this causes me to pause, because I realize that I want immediate results. However, this gift of sight came slowly and in stages. I feel a deep conviction concerning the admonition to be faithful in prayer as I read this story. First, I see the urgency of the people who begged Jesus to touch their loved one. Second, I recognize that the miracle was done in private. Third, it took time.
Jesus, please help me to be faithful in prayer!
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