Daily Manna · Day 141 · May 21
What Do You Want
“And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight.”
And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight.
Read the whole exchange, because it is short and almost every line of it is somebody talking.
The crowd, to the beggar: hold thy peace.
Bartimaeus, louder: Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.
Jesus, stopping the road: Call ye him.
The same crowd, now converted to the other side: Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee.
Jesus: What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?
Bartimaeus: Lord, that I might receive my sight.
Mark names him, which is rare in this Gospel; most of the healed are anonymous, and the naming suggests the church knew the man afterward. And notice that Jesus asks a question anybody standing there could have answered for him. He is blind, he is begging on the Jericho road, the need is not a mystery. Jesus asks anyway, because there is something he will not do for a person over their head. And what Bartimaeus asks for is the specific thing, not the acceptable version of it. He does not request a better day.
The promise is the last line of the story. Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way. The man who could not see is walking the road with him by the end of the paragraph. That question is still being put to people who have trained themselves to want nothing, and the one asking it has never once considered you a bother.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 141 is The Fare Thereof (Jonah 1:3).