{"id":3487,"date":"2024-03-15T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T18:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3487"},"modified":"2024-03-15T14:00:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T18:00:29","slug":"the-second-touch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/15\/the-second-touch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Touch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>
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Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at the miracles of Jesus \u2013 his spectacular displays of supernatural power that are reported in the Gospels.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>
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One of the signature stories from my family of origin concerns a road trip that my mom, dad, and younger brother Bruce took to New England.
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They were barreling down the interstate.\u00a0 It was hot.\u00a0 The windows in the station wagon were all down.\u00a0 The air conditioning was perfectly functional, but Dad refused to turn it on.\u00a0 That would cost money.\u00a0 The wind was rushing through the car at such a velocity that the passengers could barely hear each other speak.\u00a0
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Bruce, looking for a way to pass the time, picked up a handful of grapes.\u00a0 He began to throw the grapes up into that stiff breeze, hoping to catch one in his mouth.\u00a0 As he leaned his head back, his glasses blew right off his face \u2013 right out onto the interstate.\u00a0 He immediately began yelling for Dad to stop.
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My father, who had quickly calculated the cost of replacing those glasses, pulled the car off the road and began shouting at Bruce, \u201cGo back and look for them!\u201d\u00a0 Without hesitation, Bruce obeyed \u2013 blindly obeyed, as it turned out, since without glasses or contacts my brother is legally blind.\u00a0 It was obviously not the best idea for him to be feeling his way along the edge of the interstate, but that seemed to be a far safer option than lingering anywhere near Dad.\u00a0 \u00a0
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My father quickly jumped out and joined the search.\u00a0 Mom helpfully got behind the wheel of the station wagon and backed it up \u2013 right into a road sign, which crinkled the rear gate.\u00a0 After a few desperate minutes of scanning the asphalt, Dad finally located the missing specs.\u00a0
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If Buce had lived during Bible times, long before the invention of eyeglasses, he might still be wandering along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho looking for lost objects.\u00a0
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Blind people were almost entirely dependent on the kindness of others. \u00a0Such kindness jumps off the page in Mark 8:22-25:
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They came to Bethsaida,\u00a0and some people brought a blind man\u00a0and begged Jesus to touch him.\u00a0\u00a0He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit\u00a0on the man\u2019s eyes and put his hands on\u00a0him, Jesus asked,\u00a0\u201cDo you see anything?\u201d\u00a0 He looked up and said, \u201cI see people; they look like trees walking around.\u201d\u00a0 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man\u2019s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.<\/em>
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Blindness was a terrible burden in the ancient world.\u00a0
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Twenty centuries ago, there was no known way of halting deteriorating eyesight, and the glare of the Middle Eastern sun made things even worse.\u00a0 For most of us, impairment of sight is just a temporary inconvenience.\u00a0 But for men and women approaching middle age during the time of Jesus, there were few options apart from receiving ever-increasing assistance from friends and family.
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This man from Bethsaida is blessed to have such friends.\u00a0 They bring him to Jesus.\u00a0 \u201cPlease help this man,\u201d they plead.\u00a0 It was understood that the touch of a man endowed with God\u2019s power could bring about healing.
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Two things immediately take place that happen nowhere else in the Gospels.\u00a0
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The first is that Jesus escorts this man outside the village to a private place.\u00a0 He is not going to use this healing as a public demonstration or a theatrical prop.\u00a0 He\u2019s communicating, \u201cI have time for you.\u00a0 I want to be in your presence, one-on-one.\u201d
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In the ministry of Jesus, healing takes place in a variety of ways.\u00a0 There is no final pattern or standardized set of steps.\u00a0
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Within a private room, Jesus quietly speaks a command to a young girl who has died, and she awakens.\u00a0 In a cemetery he shouts out loud, and Lazarus comes back to life.\u00a0 He heals a servant who is miles away simply by declaring it to be so.\u00a0 But he goes out of his way to make physical contact with a desperate leper.\u00a0 He takes his fingers and puts them into the ears of a deaf man, and his hearing is restored.
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In this account Jesus does something that today might rise to the level of criminal behavior: He spits into the eyes of the blind man.\u00a0 Spitting on another human being (especially if you know you have certain communicable diseases) is punishable by prison in 11 states.\u00a0 Here in my home state of Indiana, the maximum sentence is 20 years behind bars.
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In the ancient world, however, a healer\u2019s saliva was welcomed.\u00a0 It made a certain kind of sense.\u00a0 Most of us instinctively put a burned or cut finger into our mouth in the hopes that saliva might soothe it.\u00a0 Ancient people believed that anything associated with a healer could impart restorative power.
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Which brings us to the second unique feature of this story.\u00a0 This healing takes place in stages.\u00a0
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Jesus touches once, then twice.\u00a0 Many people have experienced such gradual healing.\u00a0 It can take a long time to receive healing of the memories, the binding up of old wounds, and sufficient grace to work through addictions.\u00a0 Jesus may need to touch us again and again.\u00a0
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At certain points in the healing process we may feel just like the blind man in this story:\u00a0 \u201cI can see\u2026sort of.\u00a0 But things definitely aren\u2019t quite right just yet.\u201d\u00a0 We need to be reminded that God is the physician.\u00a0 We are his patients.\u00a0 It\u2019s up to the doctor of our souls to determine the means of our recovery, not to mention the timetable. \u00a0
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It\u2019s also clear that Jesus\u2019 gift of healing is for the whole person, and not just for the body. Sometimes our prayers for one kind of healing actually bring about an entirely different sort of restoration.\u00a0
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Back in college I sustained an injury to my right foot, in part because of the carelessness of another student.\u00a0 For three decades the pain got worse, and I especially seemed to feel it after standing for several hours on Sunday mornings preaching.\u00a0 The net effect is that I felt an increasing level of anger toward that other student, whom I hadn\u2019t seen for years \u2013 ironically, while sermonizing about God\u2019s gifts of forgiveness and grace.
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During a special time of prayer, I asked others to ask God to heal my foot.\u00a0 In a sense, I was asking those friends to bring me to Jesus the way the blind man\u2019s friends escorted him.\u00a0
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Healing came.\u00a0 But it was not what I expected.\u00a0
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God healed my attitude toward that student, which in the end has been a truly important gift.\u00a0 Interestingly, it wasn\u2019t long after that event that someone introduced me to a different style of shoe that has significantly relieved my pain.
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But some of us yearn for much, much more.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want God to substitute another kind of healing for the restoration we actively seek.\u00a0 We want deliverance from this<\/em> cancer, from this <\/em>paralysis, or from this<\/em> depression.\u00a0 Why doesn\u2019t God give us exactly what we seek?
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That question is at the heart of Jesus\u2019 anguished prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he dies.
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And over the course of the next two weeks, we\u2019ll keep it ever before us as we approach, once again, Holy Week and Good Friday.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at the miracles of Jesus \u2013 his spectacular displays of supernatural power that are reported in the Gospels.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the signature stories from my family of origin concerns a road trip that my mom, dad, and younger brother Bruce took to New… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3488,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[449,11],"class_list":["post-3487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-healing","tag-miracles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3489,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3487\/revisions\/3489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}