Understanding

21 And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand ? 22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. 24 And he looked up , and said , I see men as trees, walking . 25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up : and he was restored , and saw every man clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his house, saying , Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town. (Mark 8: 21-26)

 In the Gospel of Mark, Mark tells a story of a blind man from Bethsaida. Though this is a miracle preformed by Jesus as He healed the blind man, there is much more to this story than what meets the eye. 

Within this story, Jesus lays His hands on the blind man twice after asking His disciples why they do not understand who He is and what He is meant to do.  Now, we know that Jesus doesn't make mistakes; thus, there had to be a reason that he would spit on his eyes and only have the man see men like trees that walk. The reason is this, we cannot just see the miracles that Jesus preformed and believe that He is what He said he is, thus the reason for the "do not tell anyone what has happened here" verse. We have to realize that our belief in Him is a two part play. First, we need to believe in His goodness, mercy, helpfulness, and grace. We need to see His miracles happen in our lives and believe that they are miracles. However, if we only do this, we only get half the picture; nothing is clear when you only get half of it. Thus, the second part is that we have to understand and see His death and resurrection. While we, now days, cannot physically see the death and resurrection of Christ, we can understand it. As we read the Bible, to not only skim over or hurry through the beating, but to feel the pain that He felt and understand what you are worth to Him. Then we must see the resurrection! The new life and breath that we are blessed with each day. This is the two part story. 

To have seen and to believe is one thing, to have never seen and to still believe is quite another. 
"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed : blessed are they that have not seen , and yet have believed ." (John 20: 29)  If we are blessed, as the scripture says, then we must believe with a right mind and a right heart. We cannot merely remember the good and forget the agony; we cannot, as Christians, pretend that they world should love us! They should hate us for being different, they should criticize us and jeer at us! However, we would prefer to be liked and forget the pain and agony that Christ went through to give us life in order for our pain to stop. Who are we to forget that this is more than just miracles, this is also about trusting Him to get you through any pain. 

This two part story is like our two part lives. We only are Christian when it fits us to be so; yet, we want to be so much like the world that we lose site of the Almighty. To be a Christian we must understand that we will go through more pain and have more criticism than others that are "normal." We will have people against us as He had people against Him. If we don't have people against us, we aren't Christians, we are worldly.