Mark 8:23

New King James Version

So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when He had spit on his eyes and put His hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything.

For Meditation

Poor us!

We are so fixated on our expectations of God that we frown on the new things He does in fresh ways. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. How easy then to fall into the trap of absolute knowledge of the Most High God and decree His ways. How wrong to box Him like a genie!

Nobody has known Him enough to know if He will do even the same thing the same way tomorrow. He is sovereign and does things His way. Not that God is an erratic being with no normalcy in His creative order. The sun will rise and set every day with precision according to His creative decree. But even here, He reserves the right to let the sun stand still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Aijalon for a whole day till Israel avenged itself on her enemies (Josh. 10:12-14). 

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?” (Rom. 11:33-34)

No one!

God does things His way, we marvel at, and grow by them in faith.

The people who brought the blind man to Jesus at Bethsaida may have expected Him to heal the man the same way He had healed every other blind man (Mk. 8:22-26). Like Naaman, they may have expected Jesus to command the blindness to flee, and Bingo! The man could see well. So, why did He take the man outside the town, spit in his eyes, and touch him? Why did the man see people like trees walking around after that? Why, Jesus?

The ways of God are not our ways, people! He is God! We are mortals!

The saliva did not heal the man. His power did. Though superstition abounded about sputum from spiritual leaders, this was not the case. We can only speculate about Jesus raising the man’s expectation with the sputum, getting personal with his touch, and stimulating his faith. His blurry sight the second time may have been a lesson to the disciples about the developmental stages of faith. Then they saw in part, but soon they will see clearer about His agenda. As Paul said to the Corinthian church:

“For now, we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Cor. 13:12).

The certainty with Jesus is that He did everything with purpose. 

You may not see what He is doing in your life today. His choice for you is purposeful, nonetheless. You’ll do well to bear through the uncertainty with faith until He touches you the second or third time. Then you will worship Him like Job did after his ordeal. 

God is sovereign and does things His way. His intentions are beyond us. Contentment dwells in this truth, and we meet Him there for our peace and joy.