Daily Lesson for March 9, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 8 verses 22 through 26:

22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

Here is a deeply mythic story. By saying it is mythic, I do not mean to say it did not happen; but rather I mean it is a story which conveys a truth that is deeper than the context of the story itself. In other words, it is a deeply human story.

We all have to leave the village. We all have to leave home. We all need to have our eyes opened to truth and light beyond what we experienced in the confines of our little village -- even if our little village is New York City.

Yesterday something interesting happened. Hillary Clinton won Mississippi's Democratic Presidential Primary with 83% of the vote. Eighty-three percent. That is an incredible landslide. But that is way down South. Up North in the Michigan Democratic Primary less than half the Democratic voters checked Clinton's name.  Bernie Sanders won there.  It makes me think, how much of our view of the world is shaped by where we are and who is around us?  How much of what we think and feel and even see -- or think we see -- is determined by what village we were born in?

The blind man was given his sight. It was hard coming and it didn't come all at once. But here's a real truth: had the blind man not been willing to step outside his little village of Bethsaida then his eyes would have remained closed forever.

Oh, and by the way, do you think there might be any significance to the fact that Jesus' disciples Peter and Andrew and Philip and Nathaniel were all from Bethsaida and the rest from little villages just like it?

Like I said, this story conveys a truth deeper than the context of the story itself. Maybe it even conveys a truth for some village people like us.