Reflection on today’s gospel

I had no prior knowledge of what today’s gospel was about. Today wasn't the first time I had heard that bible reading: Mark 10:46-52. I have heard it severally for 20+ years of my life on earth. But what made that reading appealing to me today, I can’t express in words. While the priest was reading the gospel, I was psychedelic; I was imagining the scenario.

In my imagination I was struck by two things. On was the power of FAITH, and the other was the power of FOCUS. As I moved further into my thoughts (I was actually musing over the reading while I was going home from church service) I began to put those two things into perspectives.

Bartimaeus, in the reading, was the blind son of Timaeus. He was not only blind, but was also a street beggar. Jesus restored his sight. But before Jesus restored his sight something sterling and motivating happened. That was the premise that informed my thoughts. That wasn’t the first time Jesus had performed a miracle, neither was it his first healing nor the first parable about his divine works.

As the bible said, “And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” As the reading continues, “And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” That (Bartimaeus persistence) was what got Jesus’ attention, and he asked for Bartimaeus to be called. That wasn’t the end. Jesus asked him, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? And his answer was, “Lord, that I might receive my sight. And that was the success story: “Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole.

However, that propelled me to imagine, not only my, but our spiritual sightlessness. I imagined this blindness as obstacles that have precluded me from achieving the things I have set out in motion or challenges that have made impossible my efforts to move to the next level of my life. Now imagine this blindness in various circumstances you face as a debacle or whatever you see it as, which has obstructed you from moving ahead like your counterparts.

Most times we often brand others the cause of our blindness without looking inwards into ourselves. Of course as Igbo adage loosely translated into English says, pollution in the river starts from the source and then spreads. Frankly speaking, most times the bane our blindness is often of our own making. Though, sometimes it comes from others. We remain in our blindness because we have lost faith in who we are and what we can do. We prolong the duration of our blindness because we have lost focus of where we are heading for. And then we are confined to a sterilized and depressed tunnel vision.

What actually gave Bartimaeus his sight back were his faith and focus. He had his sight; it was blurred; and Jesus restored it with Bartimaeus’ faith and focus at the nucleus. This then goes to suggest that we don’t need Jesus to give us the things we never had before, but rather to bring back the things which should always have been there. Therefore, we need at all times to refocus our vision and expand our horizon, but in all with faith.