Daily Readings Reflection for 2/16/11

Scripture: Lectionary 337: Genesis 8:6-13.20-22. Psalm
116:12-13.14-15.18-19. Mark 8:22-26

Opticians and opthalmologists are our friends and we are so grateful for
their profession. They help us to see better and use some of the most
modern ways of bringing that about. Yet, they need our cooperation from
the beginning when our eyes are dilated to the actual testing of them. If
we cooperate and focus well on the tests we are rewarded with better focus
and clarity in our vision. We also are able to read better and to catch the
distant signs when we are driving. God bless our eye doctors!

Today's Gospel story helps us to appreciate their skill and to recognize in
Jesus the doctor who heals our spiritual blindness. Jesus, in this
miracle, seems to need some help. He does take the blind man away from the
crowd and performs a small ritual on his eyes then lays his hands on them.
The blind man is glad to have been invited by Jesus to come apart; he may
be rewarded. But something happens when Jesus asks him about his vision
after the first attempt with the ritual and the laying on of hands. The
blind man tells Jesus he sees people but they look more like trees that are
walking! His confidence in the Lord begins to grow and Jesus gives him
another test that results in his having complete vision. Undoubtedly, it
was twenty-twenty. The man's faith increased and he passed the second
testing with flying colors.

You get the point. To see spiritually we need the help of the Lord. These
miracles of increasing our faith are as great as the physical ones that
Jesus performed. We hear such things about many who come back from Lourdes
who have not been healed physically but have deepened their faith and their
trust. They have a new "outlook." We need to grow each day by trusting
more and more in Jesus. Our faith today should be deeper than yesterday's.
As we get older we need to lay aside some of the things we thought we saw.
The "verities we once believed seem no longer to be true." We may have
unusual doubts about many things that we believe but Jesus tells us to come
to him so that with a new effort on his part and our cooperation we come to
see that what he sees in us and does for us is as real as it gets. Amen.