Seeing Trees Walk: Mark 8:22-26

They came to Bethsaida, and people brought a blind man, begging Jesus to touch him.

As with the deaf man, Jesus led him away from the crowd—privacy for healing, intimacy for restoration. He spit on the man's eyes and laid hands on him.

"Do you see anything?"

The man looked up. The world swam into partial focus—blurry, distorted, alive but unclear. "I see people," he said. "They look like trees walking around."

Half-healed. Partially restored. It is the only gradual miracle in the Gospels, the only healing that came in stages rather than instantly.

Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes again. This time, when the man looked, his sight was completely restored. He saw everything clearly—the face of Jesus, the landscape of Bethsaida, the world in sharp focus for the first time.

Why two stages? Mark does not say. But the placement is suggestive: right before Peter's confession, right before the disciples will see Jesus clearly for the first time, a blind man receives sight in stages—first blurry, then clear.

Perhaps healing comes that way sometimes. Perhaps understanding does too. First we see people like trees walking. Then, with another touch, everything comes into focus.

Jesus sent him home: "Don't even go into the village." The miracle was personal, private, a gift for one blind man—not a spectacle for crowds.

Sometimes clarity comes slowly. But it comes.