“Saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.” (Luke 18:41-42 KJV)
“…thy faith hath saved thee.”? If faith is the evidence of something unseen, how ironic is it that the lack of being able to see it should produce vision? There are so many things in life that we wish we could see. Often to be able to get our arms around what is happening and how the various elements have come together. Yet the more we see the more we want to break down and analyze for the purpose of obtaining control over or at least being able to duplicate the process. The odd thing is that there was never anything wrong with us being able to analyze something when all we could do was hear it. We could confirm it’s timing, frequency, impact, cost, realness, and necessity just by careful listening and patience. So, is it wrong to want to see it? Not usually. Certainly not in the instance above. Yet, when you receive your sight would it not be especially powerful if you could really see? Mere vision is one thing, but what if in the completeness of the gift given to you was that your vision could be powerful enough to see all that is real and not be clouded by things which had so little substance to them? Who then is the blind man? The one who can finally see because of his belief or the one who could see all along and yet perceives nothing because of his disbelief? The crazy part is that we often give a pass to the unbelieving skeptic as one who only sees the realest part of reality. In truth, while Jesus was giving sight to those who were otherwise blind because of their faith, those who thought they could see were slowly loosing their sight by the lack of their faith.
So why do we want to see? Often it is to manage the situation, to control how fast the newness is assimilated, or to at least guide the process by our hands. When God does something powerful it is often completely above and beyond what we are capable of doing. It involves a surrender on our part to not only that He is capable of the miracle, but to recognize that it is from Him that the miracle comes. The only part we are often allowed to play is the one of recipient. Our witness is the greater then as the less our role was in God’s work; the more it was God’s work. Our trust is strengthened by the more faith we have in Him. Do you remember that faith grows like a mustard seed (see Luke 13:19)? The beauty is not that the seed started so small, but rather because it continually divides it’s own cells to become bigger. The cells do not attach more mass to themselves to increase in size thus producing a single celled tree. They make a copy and grow by continually dividing in complete trust that the next cell is just as capable of all that the first cell was. The cells may never be aware of their sum total size as a full tree, but rather those who are outside the tree can marvel at the great thing that God has made. Once in a while, in God’s timing, we get to see such things by growing the faith that He has given us.
“And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?” (2 Kings 5:13 KJV)