The CROSSroads: Personal Lessons from Mark's Gospel by Rev. Mitch Schultz

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:34:19utc

Lesson Twenty Eight: OPEN MY EYES LORD, I WANT TO SEE JESUS. (Mark 8:22-26)

"Then his eyes were opened ... He saw everything clearly." (vs. 25)

The story of Fanny Crosbie is one of the most touching testimonies of love for Jesus. Fanny Crosbie was born blind. She lived the entirety of her life having never viewed a flower, enjoyed a sunset, observed a face, or read a bible. Despite this, her spiritual sight was perfect. Her power to perceive spiritual reality and understand God's grace gave her more insight than most of us who can see will ever experience. She took this deep love for Jesus and with it penned over 3000 Christian hymns including, "Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross," "Rescue the Perishing," "All the Way My Savior Leads Me," "I Am Thine, O Lord," "Sweet Hour of Prayer," and "To God Be the Glory. Toward the end of her life someone asked Fanny if given her choice at birth would she request perfect sight. "Never" she answered. She would not trade her blindness for anything. It was a gift from God she treasured. When asked why, she gave this stunning reply. "Because when I go to heaven, the first face I want to see is the face of my Lord Jesus."

So it was for the man in our story and all those healed of blindness by Jesus. Friends of this man begged Jesus to touch him. They had a deep longing that he see. Bethsaida however was not a place for miracles. Because of the hardness of the people's hearts, Jesus removes the man from this oppressive atmosphere of unbelief and takes him into the clear air of faith outside the village. This is the only incident in the scriptures where Jesus heals a man in two stages. The man first glimpsed the blurred images of people moving around like trees walking. Once again Jesus touches the man. "His sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly." (vs.25) His sight restored, the man is instructed not to return to the unbelieving environment of Bethsaida, but to his own town. (In Matthew 11:21 Jesus warns Bethsaida that their persistent unbelief would deny them the opportunity of seeing any miracles.)

Blindness in the scriptures is often an illustration of a sin-dominated life. To be blind is to be unable to see. To be spiritually blind is to be unable to see the truth. 1 Cor. 4:4 speaks of the spiritually blind when it says that the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbeliever so that they can not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. To give us this spiritual sight sometimes our Lord must remove us from the hard and unbelieving atmosphere that surrounds us. Sometimes this spiritual restoration will not happen at once and will involve a process where things slowly become more clear to us. First we see what looks like trees walking, but as our Lord touches us again we see things clearly, the most wonderful of these new sights being the face of our Lord Jesus. Like Fanny Crosbie that should be our one longing, to see him face to face. And when we do we are not to return to the unbelieving community we came from but to a new place undistracted by the sights of this world. May God open our eyes to help us see him. "Now we see as a poor reflection as in a mirror; but then we shall see him face to face." (I Cor. 13:12)

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. -Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)