I’m reading through Charles Martin’s excellent book What If It’s True and today I read the chapter on when Jesus heals Bartimaeus of blindness at the gates of Jericho.  Mr. Martin has a couple of piercing insights into this event.  He writes:

Jesus “is walking straight toward His own execution, and yet for some illogical and inexplicable reason He stops to talk with the blind, smelly beggar living under a curse.

This picture shakes some stuff loose in me.  It rattles my foundation.  Why?  Because there is a piece of my heart that needs to know that I—with all of my filth and all that should disqualify me—matter to the God of the universe.  The God who made me.  That I’m worth His time when He has better things to do.”

Mr. Martin continues:

“I do know that Jesus fashioned Bartimaeus together before the foundation of the world.  He made his very eyes.  His lens. His optic nerve.  Science tells us the human eye has over two million working parts.  The Carpenter standing in the street fashioned those very eyes from the dust of the earth before the foundations of the earth were laid.  That should mess with your brain.”

It does!

And finally Mr. Martin summarizes what took place when Bartimaeus got healed of his blindness: “Belief was the decision.  Faith the action.  Praise the effect.  Glory the echo through eternity—which has rippled onto this page, and oddly enough, through your eyes.”

Good reading.