Day 162: Holy Spit

Mark 8:22-9:1; 2 Samuel 20-21; Hosea 1:1-2:1

There's a blind man that Jesus heals. Jesus performs his procedure on this man twice. The first time, when asked what he can see, the blind man says that he sees mostly shapes. He could have said, "Oh my! I can see! Wow!" and been satisfied with seeing only shapes for the rest of his life. But he knew there was more to it, so he tells Jesus the truth and seeks greater healing through the holy spit of Jesus. I suppose that would be the one time that being spit on would be awesome. After the second round of mud and spit, the man can actually see. How often to people want to be healed or have wisdom but they settle for a vague imitation of healing or the truth? We need to be satisfied only with complete healing in Jesus or the full truth of The Lord, and that takes honesty that we can only see in part.

The gospel is not some feel good message and sinners' prayer. Jesus says that if we want to "follow" him (not just "accept" him), we need to take up a mechanism for torture and give up our lives. I think so many people--myself included--have walked around thinking that we are "following" Jesus when our lives look NOTHING like Jesus's. Jesus didn't acquire stuff for himself, he didn't concern himself with his career, he wasn't worried about what his family or friends thought. He spoke truth boldly. And he died for us. This kind of living is what we should imitate.

There were some evil dudes in David's time: Absalom, Joab, Sheba, etc. They killed people who were on the same side as them. Maybe David should have stepped in more, but it was probably custom for the ruler to stay back and let others do battle for them. Either way, scripture is not a kiddy story and the 21st century is not necessarily worse than David's era.

Hosea's life was completely guided by The Lord: God told him who to marry so that he could demonstrate a certain marriage and he named his children according to God's anger and wrath. Was Hosea excited about marrying a temple prostitute and naming his child "no mercy"? Probably not. But his life was not his own. He was devoted to The Lord and had a heart for his people so he obeyed God and it ends up being a beautiful message from The Lord.