Spiritual Sight

Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 

Mark 8:25

This week, we encourage you to practice a Gospel Meditation on Mark 8 with your family. It’s a simple exercise that allows each person to imagine the passage of Scripture in their own minds, as a way to engage with the Bible and the Spirit.

Devotion: Spiritual Sight

Gather your family and tell them that today we’re going to engage our imaginations. God has given us each the ability to imagine and it’s a wonderful way to spend time with Him, allowing ourselves to dream, wonder and pretend all kinds of things. Let’s practice using our imaginations right now.

Take a few deep breaths and imagine a place you’d like go. As we imagine, you don’t need to answer any of these questions, just think about what comes into your mind (lead your family through this slowly, pausing for the imagination to do its thing): Where are you? Is the air around you warm or cold? Is it sunny? What kind of sounds do you hear? What can you see? Are you sitting, walking, or moving at all? Are there other people around? What about this place do you love? Take a few more seconds to sense the things around you and now let’s come back.

How was it to imagine that place? (let your family discuss for a few minutes) I wish I could see and feel exactly where you all imagined!

Ok, now I’m going to read a short passage of the Bible, a story of Jesus and a blind man. I’m going to read slowly and ask that just as you imagined a place, imagine how this story looks and feels. You can pretend to be Jesus, to be the blind man or someone else who is there watching. Notice what you feel, the things that you see and how it all unfolds as we read this story. I’ll read it once, then pause for a few seconds and read it again so we can try to catch as much as possible in this wonderful short story. Ok, you can close your eyes or keep them open. Or you can also have a piece of blank paper and something to doodle with while you listen and imagine, that’s a really fun way to see what happens as we listen.

Read through Mark 8:22-26 slowly, letting your family enter into the story of Jesus healing the blind man. Read it a second time, letting the story come to life in each of your minds.

Take a few minutes at the end to discuss various elements of the story as you each imagined it: what time of day was it? Was it sunny? Rainy? Were there a lot of people around? How did you feel? What did you think about when Jesus spit on the man’s eyes?

Thanks for imagining this story together. Finish with a short prayer, thanking God for how He can heal us and help us to see things more clearly when we read and imagine about Him.