I watched a movie titled “Sometimes in April”. It was a moving show about Rwanda and the struggles and plight of the Tutsi during the 1994 genocide.

It haunted me in worship today as I longed to see an end to the madness and oppression of man against man. For the most part the world watched as nearly one million people were murdered in Rwanda, and at the very beginning of the movie they displayed the following quote –

” In the end, we will remember not

the words of our enemies

but the silence of our friends.” Martin Luther King Jr.

As we sang about the glory of God and His power over the whole earth I just couldn't reconcile what I witnessed the night before with the songs I was singing.

How can we be more effective in stopping the horrors in our world, why don’t we care more?

As I sat in church my eyes landed on a passage from Mark 8 verses 22 -25 and I saw it in a different light, and I’m sure it is not theologically correct but it helped me understand our blindness a little better.

“And the disciples brought a blind man to Jesus and entreated Him to touch him.And taking the blind man by the hand, He brought him out of the village; and after spitting on his eyes, and laying His hands upon him, He asked him, “Do you see anything?”And he looked up and said, “I see men, for I am seeing them like trees walking about.”

Then again He laid His hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and began to see everything clearly.”

I wondered about the method that Jesus used to heal this man’s sight, and it is a stretch, but I could see the eyes of Jesus begin to well up with compassion and those tears, some of which ran down his face and some entering his mouth by way of his tear ducts, and he placed his finger on His tongue and applied them to the man’s eyes where his vision began to be restored, but incompletely; he saw men as trees. I thought that this is where my problem lies, I see and hear of the needs of the world but because I remain distant and uninvolved, they are not clear enough to move me to action. But Jesus repeated the process and the man saw clearly. This reminded me of growth in God’s grace where we begin our walk with Christ largely self-centered, but with more anointing we begin to see the needs of others through His eyes and His anguish which leads us to action.

Picture from the Internet