What True Desire for Spiritual Life might just look like...

Been thinking about the blind man in Luke 18, who sat by the wayside, "begging" . I just imagine that the pharisees and those following Jesus on the way to Jericho were probably very disgusted by the beggar as he sat begging along the road side. It appears they just assumed that Jesus did not have time or any real concern for him. After all, they had to get to Jericho,didn't they?

How little they knew, they didn't really know Jesus, did they. Yes they were following Him, yes they were following Him for some time perhaps. Yet it appears that they were the ones who seemed to fail the vision test. They ignored the blind man and in fact, they rebuked the poor beggar for his cries and commanded that he stop crying out to Jesus to have mercy on him.

Perhaps they thought there was far more important business at hand. Maybe they were in fact concerned with themselves, with their own needs, with what they needed to be doing, in their following of Jesus, you know, to get it right. Of course, we know Jesus is not like that and of course He had tremendous compassion on the man by restoring his sight so that he could see. Gloriously see! Perhaps in the end the blind beggar even saw far better than the multitude following Jesus, for it says "And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it gave praise unto God."

Now onto spiritual vision. That is what I am referring to. We are blind. We are blind spiritually and this blindness comes in various forms. Nevertheless, it is still blindness. There is an endless flood of voices out there that will share with you their particular methods of attaining spiritual life and restoring our vision from blindness . It all seems to say similar things when you look at it. But is it ? What method did this poor blind man use? Was it a method? I mean, he didn't even have a method, did he? Did he adhere to a theology, did he adhere to a doctrinal statement? I think not. All he knew is that he was desperate to "see" and that he truly was without 'sight' and unless Jesus helped him he would remain blind.

On the one hand, the one road (the road travelled by the multitude) appeared to lead to spiritual life, didn't it. After all, they were the "ONES" who were following Jesus. The other road - the one the beggar sat on - is for all who realize the failure of methods and practises and seminars , on and on, of attaining spiritual life. This becomes all too wearying and such a burden that finally, exhausted, we too lay down at the side of the road, and cry out to the Father to restore us, (completely) to grant us spiritual vision in the fullness and to the degree that only He can impart. We acknowledge to Him that we no longer want to be a part of the multitude striving, demanding, performing for spiritual life (the well travelled road) .

The other accounts of the story of the blind beggar talk of him throwing off his cloak. This to me shows how desperate this blind man was. how desperate we too can become if we travel the more travelled road of trying to attain to spiritual life. He was willing to forsake the comfort of his cloak (comfort of our perceived religions) which would be very precious to him. Make no mistake, religion is very precious to many people and the last thing they would 'throw off' if you will, would be their cloak of religion. But for those of us who have been willing to do so, we have been brave in doing so, for we are misunderstood completely, BUT most importantly, we too see what we could never have seen, if we had not come to that point in our life of realizing the futility of it all and the desperate need to cast aside our religious performance based behaviours and simply trust God to restore our spiritual vision and life.