Sometimes
silence can speak as loud as many words. You can listen to people talk about
their life and learn so much by listening to what they don’t talk about. But
sometimes, silence is just silence.
Jesus
has gone to the town of Jericho with His disciples. And as they are leaving the
town…. But wait a minute. Where are the details of what happened in this town?
Why is this large crowd following Him out of the town? What would be your
guess? How would you fill in the blank of unspoken events?
Life
is filled with unspoken blanks. Some we create and some appear on our
landscape. How we fill these blanks says as much about us as it does about what
really happened. Let me give you an example.
Have
you ever seen a wrecked car sitting outside a school with a sign warning of the
dangers of drunk driving? The first time you see it at a distance, you wonder,
how did the car get there? Why didn’t the tow truck take it away? You begin to
fill in the blanks. You see the school. You now see the sign. You fill in more
blanks. You read the sign and learn of the person’s death. You fill in the
blanks. And then you wonder about the family left behind, what they must be
going through. You fill in the blanks, even though you have no hard facts.
Jesus
must have done something in Jericho or the crowd would be moving in a different
direction. Or is Jesus traveling in a crowd as they all go up to Jerusalem for
the Passover Feast. Perhaps Jericho had the best La Quinta around. And with
breakfast included, it was the best deal for the buck.
What
we do know is that Mark is telling the story of Jesus’ life and ministry with
the goal of others coming to saving faith. He includes and excludes material in
order to preach his message with his Gospel. He can’t tell us everything. He
must determine what parts to share and what to leave out.
When
we share the Gospel with others, we must learn to do the same thing. We must
learn to include what is most important for the target audience. If they have
no knowledge of the Scriptures, then we would start at a very different place
than if they were students of ancient Semitic languages. Some things would
remain unspoken. We can’t tell everything that could be known in one sitting.
Timaeus’
son sits by the roadside. How he was blinded we don’t know. How he got to the
roadside we don’t know. His age, family background, knowledge of Jesus’
activities, spiritual condition, favorite foods, favorite Facebook games. All
these and many more we don’t know. We do know he is sitting there begging.