Imago Gospels - 16 - Seeing
First, this picture was taken after we reached our altitude after departing Dallas for Doha on the first leg of the big journey. While we had beautiful colors in the sky on our side of the plane (including the full moon), we didn’t get the full breadth of the sunset that was seen out the other side of the plane.
But there are three ways that this picture connects to this passage for me.
First, like the mother of James and John, there was something I wanted that I could not have. I wanted to just get to the other side of the plane and reach over someone and get a bunch of shots of the beauty that was there. But there were several reasons that I could not do so. First, it would be pretty rude to just go over and interrupt those on the other side of the plane. But second, if I were to do that, I would miss the beauty that was transpiring on the other side of the plane out the window next to me - the additional blues and purples from the sunset along with the full moon shining. (picture below).
Second, a sunset always speaks of a closing. It speaks of the closing of one day’s story and the promise of another story to come. As we come to this chapter in Matthew and in the chapters to follow, we see how this telling of Jesus’ story is starting to come to a close and for those of us who have read it many times before, we know that a new story will begin.
Finally, the healing of the two blind men touched me because it reminded me of one of those icebreaker questions I was asked one time - “If you could only keep one of your five senses, what would it be?” While there are reasons that I would not want to lose the other four, my sense of sight is so important to me, but especially for my photography. It has become so much a part of my spiritual life that it would be hard to lose that. So, I could hear myself being like those two coming to Jesus and saying, “Master we want our eyes opened, we want to see!” (Message translation of 20:33).
