As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” “Yes, Lord,” they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.” But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region. Let’s be honest. It isn’t always easy to follow Jesus. I am very close to him, and I can hear him better than most, but there are times when I am totally lost because I can’t figure out what he wants. This isn’t surprising because he is God, and as the prophet Isaiah said, his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways. See Isaiah 55:8-9 for the rest of it. And I end up feeling like the two blind men in this story, as I am sure that you too sometimes feel. Imagine them for a moment. It could not have been easy for them to follow Jesus. They would have had to listen very intently to the sounds that would guide them to him and occasionally ask people for advice, but their determination took them to Jesus. There seems to be a powerful spiritual lesson to be learned here. Because in a way, all of us are blind. We hear about Jesus being the Savior of the world, but that has to resonate within us somewhere so that we want to seek him out in the manner of the two men in this story. Why seek him out? Because we recognize that we are blind and want to see. I am speaking not of physical sight but of spiritual sight. But is Jesus really the answer? We recognize our spiritual blindness and the corresponding need for mercy, but is Jesus the one who is going to grant this to us? One way to find out is to go looking for him, trying to find him despite the surrounding cacophony. And when we finally reach him, we say, “Have mercy on us.” This is the prelude to everything. And he asks one question. “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” The blind men answered as one, “Yes, Lord.” What is our answer? Faith is defined as man’s response to God and while this is on several levels, at its most basic is the response to this question: “Do you believe I am able to give you sight?” If the response is “yes,” then we have received what we sought from Jesus. Sight. May all of us who are blind seek Jesus and see.
