Thursday, May 30, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Via et veritas et vita
Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people.
Is the man blind?
Yes, he has been blind and is blind and will always be blind.
Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me!
What matters is that the man, this Bartimaeus man, he himself believes in Jesus – not his blindness.
Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called Bartimaeus the blind man, and they said, “Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you.
Bartimaeus threw aside his cloak. In other words, he threw aside the only valuable possession he owned. He recognized this moment was the turning point in his life.
Jesus asked, “What do you want me to do for you?”
And that, in my life and yours, is always the turning point, the turn toward true north.
What do you want me to do for you?
The Lord is a living stone rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God. You also are living stones. Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.
Bartimaeus answered, “Master, I want to see.” Think of it. Our beggar couldn’t see Jesus. He smelled the sap of the tree he sat beneath, but he could not see it. He felt the crowd around him. He heard the disciples say, “Take courage! Get up. Jesus is calling you.”
You have tasted that the Lord is good.
Sometimes I walk into our apartment and the smells from Margaret’s kitchen flair my nostrils and make me want to sing. It might be meat or chicken broth, or Brazilian cheese bread, or cookies with Jasper. Bartimaeus knew how to smell, but now he had his first and probably only chance to … see!
Jesus told him, “Go your way, your faith has saved you,” and immediately he received his sight.
How often have I heard this story? Since I was a kid, surely 150 times, and occasionally I get the idea that Bartimaeus is right there in the room with me. His eternity, as mine, lasts forever. We are made to be eternal beings, and our life, then death, on this fallen earth is merely a short first chapter.
He has called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
What happens the next day to our beggar friend? There’s nothing in the story about the next day, or the day before, but only about this day when Bartimaeus and Jesus found each other.
Bartimaeus immediately followed Jesus on the way.
The Way.
I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Peter makes it clear to generations after him that followers of Jesus are transformed, even on this globe, in this world, here and now.
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own.
(1 Peter 2, Psalm 100, John 8, Mark 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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