That I may see again

Bartimaeus sits where the blind always sit, at the edge of the road, begging. He cannot see Jesus coming, but he hears the crowd change, and that is enough. He starts to shout, and when they tell him to hush he only shouts louder, because a blind man learns that his voice is the one thing he still owns. Jesus stops. Call him. And the question Jesus asks is almost startling in its openness: what do you want me to do for you? A blind beggar could ask for many things — money, safety, a better corner. What he asks for is the thing underneath all the others. Rabboni, that I may see again. Notice the again. He had not always been blind; there was a time he could see, and the darkness came later and took it. He is not asking for something new so much as the return of something lost. And when the sight comes back, he does not gather his cloak and go home to the old corner. He follows Jesus down the road. Recovered sight, the moment it is given, becomes a direction.

Most of the long wilderness is a slow going-blind. Not all at once, but by degrees: the sense of God dims, the way forward greys over, the meaning of things you once saw plainly fogs and then is gone. You learn to beg at the edge of the road because you cannot find the road. And the temptation, when help finally comes near, is to ask for the wrong thing — to ask for the corner improved rather than the eyes opened, for circumstances rearranged rather than sight restored. Bartimaeus asks for the deeper thing, and it is the prayer that turns disorientation toward its dawn. Not first a changed life, but the ability to see again — to see God, to see the way, to see that any of it means something after all. And the proof that the sight is real is where it sends you. He did not blink in the new light and shuffle back to the familiar dark. He fell in behind Jesus on the road. Sight that does not lead to following was never the sight worth asking for.