Have mercy on me(3)

Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" (Mark 10:48)

In the last paragraph of the preceding meditation mentions, “We have to shout all the more on the borderline of nothing and something.” For some the meaning of this paragraph can be vividly understood while others may feel it as too much of idealism. This necessitates some additional explanation for proper understanding.

We are now living in the world of something. The food we eat and the water we drink every day are all ‘something’. When we open our eyes everything is seen, open our ears all sounds are heard and open the senses of our body everything is felt. This world is filled with wonders that we cannot describe it properly. We are here together with ‘something’ of the world. This is the world of something.

However, everything cannot always come into our senses. When we close our eyes everything disappears. When we close our ears no sound is heard. In this case, can we affirm those ‘something’ has been there originally? In a sense we are not aware of the fact that something is already in stock originally. Is the incapability of our perception due to the limitation of our senses? It is not so either.

The world right now might not be something that we are sensibly experiencing. Suppose there is a tree. Though we recognize it as a tree there is no complete guarantee that it will be a tree. It could be a totally different object such as a bird and the wind. Then a tree might be a kind of ‘nihility’ for them.

More fundamentally speaking, everything in this world including mankind returns to ‘nihility’ in a flash. Because of fastness of its speed we seem to put on the boarder of ‘something’ and ‘nothing’. We are just getting dizzy before this fact. Yes. We simply shout for help on the border of something and nothing. It is a shouting for life.

Have mercy on me (2)

Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" (Mark 10:48)

Many people who surrounded Jesus rebuked Bartimaeus to be quiet. They told him, “You are too noisy before our noble teacher. Do not disturb our secret religious talk.” But Bartimaeus shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

At this critical juncture, Bartimaeus is not supposed to be in a position to consider other’s situation. He has only one goal of healing his blindness. He does not have any other way but to indulge in having Jesus’ mercy. He comes to Jesus not because of his superior spiritual excellence but in his miserable situation that pushes him forward to Jesus. At this point, Jesus’ teaching on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” can be justified.

I do not know what kind life you are going through. But you are a blessed if your heart is completely filled with the deep concern about God. A loneliness, disease, business failure or broken family could drive you to such troublesome life. Then such bad condition of life rather is the grace of God. Of course it would be better to concentrate on God with good condition of life. But such thing rarely happens to our life.

Here do not misunderstand the meaning of concentrating on God alone. It does not mean to indulge in church life only, by abandoning all other part of life. Such life is different from a mere church life which is different from the concentration on God. It is rather important for us to be captured by the power that enables us to live.

Whatever we do and wherever we go we have to shout all the more. It is the shouts of our souls. We have to shout all the more standing on the borderline of nothingness and something else, “Lord, have mercy on me!”