People Like Trees
LENT 2024 | DAY 20
Mark 8:22-38; 9:1 (NIV)
(Charis Lim, Chairperson, Digital Wesley)
The following passage from Mark 8:24 (NIV) stands out for me:
24He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
The healing of this blind man is quite unlike any other healing that took place during the earthly ministry of Jesus. Typically, when Jesus performed a miracle, the person healed was restored at once. However, this healing of the blind man was protracted and took place in stages. At first he could not see at all. Then he saw people that looked “like trees walking around”. And finally, he saw clearly.
When I had a sore eye some years back during the pandemic, it was a great inconvenience as I couldn’t see people well on the computer screen over zoom meetings. Everything looked blurry and I wished I could see clearly. But isn’t this like life? We don’t like blurry. We want to see clearly immediately. We hate uncertainty. I can imagine the blind man wondering, why am I not fully healed? Jesus, you healed the woman with the issue of blood with just one touch of your garment. What’s happening here? And I believe God is saying to the blind man, “Don’t give up when the first touch didn’t work”. I wonder whether God wants me to have the tenacity to declare that even if I don’t see the full picture, when things are blurry, and when there is no clarity in my situation, I’m still going to seek God until I see fully. For it is in leaning closer to God that I start seeing more deeply the lessons He has for me.
The blind man said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” That is an odd thing for a blind man to say. How was he able to describe people as though they were trees? If he could describe it, he must have seen trees before in order to make the comparison. I believe it is because this is not a miracle of a man seeing for the first time. But this is a man who could see before. He was not born blind, he remembered what trees looked like. That means Jesus was restoring His sight. The lesson for me is that what I lost before, God is powerful to restore. Our God is a God of restoration. What we remember of things past, God can restore and do more than that. But the restoration didn’t come until he was honest about things being blurry. Just as the blind man had the honesty to say it was not clear, perhaps God wants me to come before Him as well in that posture of utter dependence on Him.
Father in heaven, thank You that even in a season where things are blurry, where there is uncertainty and I do not see with clarity, you are calling us to be a “people like trees” who are planted and grounded in Jesus, growing in dependence on Him and bearing much fruit for His glory.
As the Psalmist declares in Psalm 1:3, “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.”
I claim this promise for my life today!
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
DISCUSSION POINTERS:
1. What are some of the uncertainties you are facing where you need the Lord’s clarity today?
2. Name those things in your life where you need God to restore in the fullness of His perfect plan and time.
3. How can we be “People like trees” who are planted and grounded in Christ in our workplaces, schools and homes so that others around us may also be drawn to the living waters of God?
