Chronic headaches? Tired, bloodshot eyes?  Increasing light-sensitivity?  Floaters?  Hazy vision?  Difficulty reading or focusing? It’s time for a comprehensive eye exam.  Yes, there will be the traditional eye charts to measure visual acuity and assess near or farsightedness.  Flashing lights, right and left, test peripheral vision and the reaction of your pupils.  While various “viewfinders” are used to assess color blindness and depth perception.

But there is much more.  Retinal cameras and slit lamp biomicroscopes allow your optometrist to evaluate the basic structural and functional integrity of your eyes.  The tonometer, which we call the “puffer,” measures eye pressures to assess for glaucoma.  And for those who need corrective lenses, the phoropter with its multitudinous knobs and lenses allows the optometrist to hone in on a correct prescription while you imagine you are manning the periscope of a submarine.

Routine eye exams are important, because a loss of vision complicates common activities and creates significant challenges in doing the things that are important to us.  Worsening vision is frustrating and often a source of significant grief.  But for many, treatment may reverse or mitigate vision loss.  While for others, advancing technologies offer new means of help.

But what if our vision loss is spiritual?  Loss of our physical sense of sight is worrisome, but how many of us are concerned about the condition of our spiritual vision?  Are we as anxious about hardening hearts, struggling faith, or spiritual apathy as we are about weakening eyesight?  How careful are we to examine the condition of our souls, of our faith, of our growth or regression in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ?  And if our spiritual vision is failing, what can be done?

In Mark 8 Jesus concludes his Galilean ministry and sets his face to go to Jerusalem, to betrayal, to rejection, to the cross, to death, and to resurrection.   As Mark’s narrative progresses Jesus’ popularity has increased, but his disciple’s faith has increasingly struggled.  Sandwiched between the healings of a deaf man and a blind man, in the final of the “boat narratives,” Jesus confronts the disciples with their spiritual blindness and deafness in a series of pointed rhetorical questions. 

Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? …Do you not yet understand? – Mark 8:17-18

As the boat moors at Bethsaida, Jesus puts an exclamation point on his rebuke, as he progressively heals a blind man.  In one of the most unusual healings in the gospels, Jesus shows his disciples and us a gracious picture of the importance of examining ourselves for spiritual blindness and seeking treatment from Christ alone.

Join us as we examine Mark 8:22-26 and consider Jesus’ unusual healing of the blind man and what it teaches us about our concern for spiritual growth. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.