Jesus stopped, called them, and said, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Lord,” they said to him, “open our eyes.” (Matthew 20:32-33)
What do your prayers consist of? Do you pray for yourself and for others? Do you ask for security, peace, health, or wealth? Asking for these is harmless, but for what reason would you ask for them?
Today’s passage in Matthew 20:29-34 focuses on an even more important gift to pray for—for God to pour his mercy on us and to open our eyes. This event is more than a story of Jesus healing two physically blind men, as good health and wealth aren’t guaranteed for us (think Job or, in the gospel books of Mark and Luke, the poor widow who gave everything she had). The problem isn’t “poor health” or “poverty.”
The real problem is our spiritual blindness, our sin in our hearts. God, knowing that we couldn’t and wouldn’t fix our sin on our own, sent Jesus, His only Son to the world as the Lamb of God. In response, the Lord simply wants your heart because He loves you. He doesn’t need our wealth, our cleaned up looks, or our “works” to try to win His favor. Jesus already finished the work on the cross. Instead, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). This is a call for all of us to repent (Rom. 3:10-11). All we need to do to repent is to lay our lives for Christ, to ask that He’ll open our eyes to see our sinful nature, and to ask for His mercy. The Lord will take care of the rest if we ask. Only Christ can make us righteous through His death on a cross and His resurrection.
Let’s pray, “Lord, thank you for healing our blindness of sin by dying for us and drawing us to you by the Holy Spirit. Have mercy on us and open our eyes. We pray this in Your name, amen.”