Have you seen and met the Risen Lord? If no, what is preventing you from doing so? James 1,19-27; Mk 8,22-26

The miracle story that is our text for today is the second of the two miracle stories in Mark in which Jesus uses external methods. The first was in 7,31-37 in which Jesus cures a deaf man with an impediment in his speech. By placing thas miracle immediately after Jesus poignant question to his disciples about their lack of understanding (8,21) and just before Peter’s Confession of Jesus as the Christ (8,27-30), Mark probably intends to hint to the reader that the disciples too wall understand. Their blindness will also be healed. The healing takes place in two stages to probably correspond with the two answers to the questions of Jesus (8,27-30) about his identity. The first is the response of the people who say that Jesus is John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the prophets (8,28) and this seems to correspond to the first stage in which the blind man can see people but who like trees walking (8,24). The second is the response of Peter on behalf of the disciples that Jesus is the Christ (8,30) which seems to correspond to the stage where the blind man can see everything clearly (8,25). At the end of this episode, Mark leaves his readers with the question of whether the disciples like the blind man will also be able see.

Some of us have a tendency to pigeon hole God and put him in a compartment. This leads to seeing him merely as one who fixes things for us or one to whom we go only in need. We might fail to see that he is always there and is much bigger than anything we can ever imagine.