Joint Effort

Do you think God needs our help to help us?

They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Can you see anything?’ And the man looked up and said, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.’ Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Then he sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village.’ - Mark 8:22-26

What is clear to me in today's reading is the significance of the dialogue that takes place between Jesus and the blind man.

Can you see anything? Jesus asks.

Jesus has no way of knowing what the man is experiencing through his senses.  The senses God gives us are ours to use to experience His creation.  We need to use them and communicate back to God what they tell us about His world.

Imagine for a moment what it would be like for God to be blind of His creation, relying on us to communicate what we see, hear and touch.

When we are in sync with God, He can experience the world He created, but when we shut Him off, He goes blind and deaf, so cut off, that He had to send His son to experience our world first hand.

I know it sounds a bit disrespectful of God to imagine He is so removed from us, but in this scenario, we are the ones removing ourselves form Him.  When we stop communicating with Him, we shut Him off and He cannot help us.

When God walks among us and we ask for help, He sees what our lives are like and He wants to make those lives better, but we have to tell Him what we see, hear and touch.

Without the two way communication, everything goes silent.

Our faith is a joint effort.  We reach out and God responds.

More to come...