Moments

Then they came to the city of Jericho. When He was leaving the city with His followers and many people, a blind man was sitting by the road. He was asking people for food or money as they passed by. His name was Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus. He heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. He began to speak with a loud voice, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, take pity on me!” Many people spoke sharp words to the blind man telling him not to call out like that. But he spoke all the more. He said, “Son of David, take pity on me.” Jesus stopped and told them to call the blind man. They called to him and said, “Take hope! Stand up, He is calling for you!” As he jumped up, he threw off his coat and came to Jesus. Jesus said to him, “What do you want Me to do for you?” The blind man said to Him, “Lord, I want to see!” Jesus said, “Go! Your faith has healed you.” At once he could see and he followed Jesus down the road.

~Mark 10:46-52 

Moments.  Think about this!  Our lives are made up of moments.  Every photograph we take is merely a moment in time.  Every memory is of a moment in time.  

      * I don't remember being born; 

      * I can barely remember this morning;  

      * I do remember the moment my daughter was born. 

      * I have lots of pictures of friends and moments spent with them.

      * I remember the face of my first girlfriend (3rd grade. She gave me a baseball sized wad of Plasti-Tack and that won me over).

I recently took time to look back through my high school yearbook from my senior year.  WOW! And we thought we were on the cutting edge of awesome.  Then I started reading the comments people wrote in my yearbook....many of them were the cliche: "Have a great summer" and "Don't ever change" written by people in a hurry and who didn't know me all that well (or found me annoying but wanted to appear to be nice).  But then there were the people who wrote about specific moments in our friendship. Like when we rode innertubes down the Saluda River, or when we pulled a prank that backfired and ended up squishing into the midnight movies because we were soaked from head to toe.  And then there were some that we won't discuss.

But each represents a moment in life.  A memory.  I am convinced that, while we live in a continuum, our minds work on a stream of moments.  

Think about Jesus' ministry.  The writers of the Gospels captured moments in Jesus' life.  Look at today's passage...Bartimaeus was blind.  During this time in history, if you were different from everyone else, you were thought to be cursed by God.  Bart was blind, so he must have been cursed by God and he lived each day going through the same motions of the only job available to him which was begging.  Then Jesus comes along.  Bart hears the crowds of people and probably believes that a lot of people in a group could mean he could get a little extra from begging.

THEN Bart hears someone in the crowd say that Jesus is in the crowd.  So Bart has a quick decision to make, he can continue to live his life as a blind beggar or he can seize the moment and see if Jesus really can help him.  So Bart takes his moment and starts to yell at the top of his lungs calling for Jesus to take pity on him and help him.  Now, some of the crowd want Bart to shut up and not interfere with this great teacher, because Jesus has "more important" things to attend to than a God-cursed-blind-beggar. BUT Jesus stops!  He tells those close to Bart to bring him over, which they do.  Then Jesus asks Bart what he wants.  

Again, Bart has a choice to make.  Again, Bart seizes the moment and tells Jesus that he wants to see.  Jesus, in that moment, heals Bart and in that moment removes Bart excuse to continue expecting others to care for him.  In a moment! 

Our lives are made up of moments! Bart seized his and made it count.  Will You?