Mark, Day Twelve

Mark 8:1-26

• This chapter begins with the Feeding the 4000 miracle.  Now, how dumb are the disciples?  Jesus has already performed the Feeding the 5000 miracle, but when he tells them he wants to feed all these people (who have been with him for three days! - that's quite a revival meeting), they say, "How will we do that?!"  Duh.  And so Jesus again uses a few loaves and fish and feeds everyone so much that there are leftovers.
• And then some Pharisees question Jesus again, wanting a sign from heaven from him, and he answers "sighing deeply in His spirit" (v. 12) that this generation will get no sign from him.  You can just feel the tiredness of Jesus' spirit here. 
• And so Jesus goes away in a boat with his disciples, but they forgot to take enough bread for everyone with them.  And while Jesus is trying to speak to them, the disciples are just worrying about bread.  And Jesus gets pissed.  And basically says, "Have you not seen all these things I've done?!"  Really, these disciples are not the brightest bulbs.  They've seen TWO huge feeding miracles and they're worried that they only have one loaf of bread on their boat?
• Then Jesus heals a blind man, but it takes two steps.  First, the man just sees fuzzy tree-like people.  Then he fully sees everyone.  Now, why is this?  Jesus has been healing for months now, and has even raised someone from the dead.  It seems like he should know how to do it, so it's not that he just didn't give the man enough Jesus-juice.  But can you imagine going from being totally blind to totally seeing?  That would be overwhelming.  Particularly if you've always been blind.  Maybe Jesus was giving him some time to adjust.  Maybe the biblical writer is showing us that we see in stages - we don't immediately see everything clearly, but Jesus/God helps us to grow in seeing what we are able to see.  Hmm, I don't think that sentence was written well, but maybe you know what I mean.