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.
The Arnold Journey 