In the gospel of Mark
(8:22-27) there is a story of how people from a village brought a blind man to
Jesus for healing. The story unfolds
with Jesus taking the blind man by the hand and leading him beyond the
village. “He put spit on the man’s eyes,
laid hands on him and asked, ‘Do you see anything?’” The man responded that he saw people, but
they looked like trees walking. So Jesus
had to lay his hands on the man’s eyes once again and the man recovered his
sight with 20/20 vision!
This is a great story of how we come through the process of
discernment. The spirit often invites us
to leave our comfort zones so that in our discomfort we can be detached enough
from our illusions and certainties to notice how we feel within, so that we can
learn to trust God’s grace and light.
Much like the man in the story, we are never alone. God is present with
us as we encounter new events, circumstances, relationships, and experiences
that are part of our search for what God desires of us. Discernment is a way of deep listening and
deep questioning that cannot be forced.
There is no “drive-thru” for discernment; there is no App for quick and
easy answers; and there are no flashing lights with bells and whistles pointing
to the right path! Often, we find
clarity and peace a little at a time – we get “blurry-clear” insights and begin
to notice more and more of God’s purpose for us with each step on our journey.
We are invited to notice signs in our everyday lives that God seems to put in
our path to point to the way that will give us peace and joy. This movement is
often slow, so as to allow God to gently take us by the hand and to touch our
hearts again and again, so that our seeing becomes a vision of how we are being
called to a new way of being and becoming.
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