Father, I am so grateful to be in the middle of a new norm in my life. I have striven for a life with You at the center, but I seem to always throw a wrench in it somewhere along the line. I am far from perfect, but I am blessed to have You dead center in who and what I am. All praise goes to You for keeping me in the center of Your hand!
Luke 18:35-43 (<<click here to read the passage)
(This is one of those passages out of which I can take another bite!)
I recently read an article on Live Science that talked about research that claims that people born blind or blinded at a very young age really do have enhanced abilities in their other senses. The research used detailed brain scans to show that these individuals had heightened senses of hearing, smell, and touch compared to the people in the study who were not blind. The scans also revealed that people who are blind also experienced enhancements in other areas, including in their memory and language abilities.
The blind man in this passage from Luke 18 “saw” and understood things to which the religious leaders of his day were blinded. Individuals like him were not necessarily well educated, but what does he call out when trying to get Jesus’ attention?
…he began shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” v38
The title “Son of David” is a title for the Messiah, and it means that he understood Jesus to be the long-awaited Messiah.
In the throng were men trained in all the nitty-gritty details of the Law and God’s word to Israel. Yet, though they “saw” Jesus’ miracles they were blinded to His identity and refused to recognize him as the Messiah. *
The blind man saw Jesus for who He was and the seeing religious professionals were blind to it!
There were a couple who reached out and believed (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea – and probably others of which we are not aware) but most of them rejected the truth before their very eyes. Jesus didn’t fit what they thought the Messiah would look like. He didn’t act like they thought He would act. Probably the biggest problem of all was that He didn’t acknowledge their religious “superiority”. He called them out on their self-righteous, pompous attitudes undermining all that had been building upon for generations. Jesus cut their legs out from under them! How dare He!
But, once again, are we any different? Many of us have preconceived notions of what it means to be a Christian. We have most of our thoughts neatly arranged in little boxes and we dare not think outside those boxes…that would just mess everything up!
What we truly need, is to examine the things we hold so tenaciously to as “truth” to see if they are true…or not.
In my later years, many of the hardline truths that I have held for so long have come under scrutiny and some of those things have not held up so well. Maybe at their core, there is truth, but the trappings found upon them were put there by man – not God. It has not been an easy journey and I am most certainly still traveling but maybe we all need to do some scrutinizing to see the truth at the core of our beliefs and in so doing we will be strengthened to go forth to change the world as Jesus has called us to do!
*Life Application Study Bible New Living Translation
Oct 27th, 2020, Tues, 6:30 pm
