“Persistence pays off”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Sunday, October 27, 2024
Mark 10: 46-52 (Forward, p. 90) CEV p. 1042
I have often wondered about those sparse occasions in the Gospel accounts where an individual’s name is not only remembered, but also recorded. Often these individuals are basically ‘nobodies’, people whose only claim to fame, it would seem, is that their lives were touched by Jesus. In this regard, I think of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1), Jairus (Mark 5:22), and Simon from Cyrene (Matthew 27: 32). And today, we have yet another individual of this sort, the blind beggar Bartimaeus.
So, what is so remarkable about Bartimaeus? I would say that it is his persistence, his persistence in the face of many voices that would silence and discourage him. He’d heard that Jesus from Nazareth was passing by and so he cried out for help. But his shouts were silenced by his fellow passers-by. They told him to be quiet. But he shouted even the more, and even more loudly.
Jesus heard his cry and told the crowd to call him to come over. At that,
Bartimaeus took heart, jumped up, threw off its coat and ran to Jesus. For a blind man, even that would ‘taken some doing.’ Those aren’t always actions that one would expect of a blind man, so it shows something of his determination, his persistence in the face of adversity.
So, here it gets sort of weird: as is often the case with Jesus’ interactions with needy people, Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Many people would be put off by this seemingly ridiculous and insensitive question, but not Bartimaeus. He immediately responded, “Master, I want to see!” Such was his faith, buoyed up by his persistence and determination, and as a result, he was healed. He could see right away, and followed along with Jesus.
Such should be our persistence, our determination, in prayer. Far too often we make short off-the-cuff prayers and then forget about them. Far too often we give up too quickly. For too often we are not even expecting anything by way of results and so we miss out on the results when they come. We need to be more like blind Bartimaeus.
Forward notes: “Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” (verse 51a)
“There may be no stupid questions, but there are unhelpful ones. I once did something fairly stupid, and after facing the consequences, my wife asked, ‘What did you think was going to happen?’ I responded, ‘Obviously not that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it!’ Jesus’s question to the blind man feels like an unhelpful and insensitive question. What else would the blind man want but to see?
“Perhaps Jesus is teaching us a lesson. To live the life that God always intended us to live, we need to know what we want.
“I once had a series of conversations with a person who wanted something more in their life. When I kept pushing on what they meant by ‘something more,’ they didn’t know. They knew they wanted ‘it,’ but because they didn’t know what ‘it’ was, they remained lost. What I love about this story from Mark is the blind man’s unwavering belief in not only what he wants but that Jesus is the person who can help him get it. And he is bold in asking for it.”
Moving Forward: “How would you answer this question from Jesus?”