Do you remember how the Gospel of Mark began?

The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: (Mark 1:1–2)

Mark began with Isaiah. And the truth is he never left Isaiah. Isaiah’s prophecy about the coming of the kingdom of God has been the quiet subtext running behind the whole Gospel so far.

Do you remember Jesus’s first sermon, the nineteen-word manifesto of a message?

“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15 )

From that beginning, Jesus has moved about the countryside demonstrating the nearness of the kingdom. We need to stay in touch with this bigger picture. When the kingdom of God breaks in, it reverses the kingdom of the world. Let’s recall more of Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the kingdom. Watch for the predicted reversals that signify its coming.

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. (Isa. 35:5–7)

It brings us to today’s text. But before we go there, let’s remember a few days ago when Jesus opened the ears of a deaf man and restored his ability to speak. Today he opens the eyes of a blind man. Jesus is turning everything around. Remember the paralytic man who was lowered through the roof of the house. Jesus told him to rise up, take up his mat and walk, and he did.

Eyes of the blind opened? Check! Ears of the deaf unstopped? Check! Lame leaping like a deer? Check! Mute tongue shouting for joy? Check!

It sounds strange to say, but it’s all too easy to get caught up in the demonstrations and miss the bigger reality being demonstrated. I think for Jesus, at times the miracles actually got in the way of his larger mission. It’s why he wanted to keep a lot of that on the down low. People needed help and he was moved with compassion to help them. However, he knew people needed more help than a mere miracle. People most need the reversal of everything broken and the restoration of everything made new. People most need the world to be restored to the original intent of its Creator.

The same is true in our own lives. We need the help of God desperately in so many situations. We need miracles. But more than help for our particular situations, we need the reign and rule of the God of heaven and earth to be completely reinstated everywhere. When this happens, there will be no more tears and no more sin and no more death. There will be no more need for miracles. This is the bigger picture and the better horizon we must constantly lift our eyes to perceive.

It’s why the prayer of all prayers is not “Give us this day, our daily bread,” but “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Yes, we must feed the hungry, but we labor and pray for the day when there will be no more hunger. Do we believe this?

The thing signified is always more important than the signs pointing to it. Miracles are short-term solutions, but they point to the long-term reality. That’s what we need to remember. Let’s keep that in perspective.

Just as it was in today’s text with the blind man first seeing partially and then fully, so we are ever in need of more vision clarity. It is easy to settle for seeing people who look like trees walking around. Blurry vision is better than no vision but it is not enough when Jesus stands ready to give us clear vision.

PRAY

Lord Jesus, I do so often fix my focus on the near-term solution I need. Keep my mind and heart lifted to the further horizon, which even now is breaking in on us. Show me how to welcome your kingdom in the smallest and biggest ways. I want the movement more than the miracle; for that is the greater miracle. Come, Holy Spirit! Melt me. Mold me. Fill me. Use me. For the glory of your name, Jesus. Amen.

JOURNAL

What might it look like for our ambitions and our prayers and our actions to become more captivated by the bigger picture and the further horizon of the movement of God’s kingdom and less attached to the consuming challenges of right now? How might that kind of shift change the present moment even?

SING

Today, we will sing “Be Thou My Vision” (hymn 49) from our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.

For the Awakening,

J. D. Walt

P.S. About that entire book I wrote on the Gospel of Mark . . .

I’ve read a lot of books about the Holy Spirit and I’ve read a lot of books about Jesus, but I have never read a book exploring the Holy Spirit through the primary lens of the life of Jesus. So I decided to write that book. I called it the Gospel of the Holy Spirit. It makes sense, doesn’t it—if we want to understand how the Holy Spirit works in perfection through a human being we would find that in Jesus of Nazareth. The Acts of the Apostles—those guys are the understudies, right? And again, full disclosure, I reached back to this book to help with today’s entry. If you would like to get a copy, you can order it here. 

John David (J. D.) Walt Jr. is the Sower-in-Chief for Seedbed and the pastor of the Gillett Methodist Church in Gillett, Arkansas. 

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