What do you really want?

11-3-21 Glenda Simpkins Hoffman

Recently the temperature dropped significantly. It’s a new phase of the fall season. Personally, I like the crisp, cool mornings with warm afternoons. I’m never sure when this change will happen, but I’m usually not prepared for it. This past week I finally took the time to get out my winter clothes because I was cold. I wanted to make a change in order to be warm.  

The change of seasons is an expected and natural one that comes every year. Wearing shoes instead of sandals, starting to wear jackets, and walking a little later in the morning to take advantage of the light are all part of the changes I make to adapt to seasonal changes.  

This week I began sitting in front of my light box for an hour a day because I have seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Every November, I have to make this change in my behavior in order to get additional light to adapt to the shorter days that lead to less daylight. I want to do this because it helps counter the negative effects I have suffered in the past.  

Seasonal change is a part of our lives, at least where we live. But change comes in other ways as well. Right now, I am praying for at least 20 people—family, friends, people in our church or connected to people in our church—who are dealing with the reality of cancer.  

Life changes after a cancer diagnosis. There is an awareness of a real vulnerability and the need to rearrange priorities and plans. People who thought they were busy make time to accommodate doctor appointments, scans, treatments, and side effects from treatments. This is done willingly because they know the cost of not doing it. Treatment provides a way to eradicate cancer so that healing, recovery, and wholeness might come. Cancer patients endure a lot of change and adapting because that is what leads to life. They want to be made well because they want to live. 

A few weeks ago as I gathered with others by phone to pray, we listened to the wonderful devotional reading from Mark 10:46-52, a passage I love: They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.  

Notice the blind man’s healing began with the awareness of his need. Who knows how long he had been blind and dependent on others to provide for him through lose change. Bartimaeus longed for healing, which gives him the courage to shout out to get Jesus’ attention, even when others told him to be quiet. Jesus meets him where he is and helps him to clarify what he really wants by asking that penetrating question: “What do you want me to do for you?”  

This is a question we all have to answer. The problem is we often don’t know. Maybe we are too busy, too distracted, or simply too good at managing our discomfort or even pain that we just don’t know what we really want or we are too afraid of being disappointed if we don’t get it.  

Awareness of our need can bring to the forefront what really matters to us and clarify what we really want. Underneath the pain and disappointment is the desire to be free to live life to the full, not just physically but emotionally, relationally, spiritually. And in that place of vulnerability where we dare to name what we want, Jesus meets us and does for us what we can’t do for ourselves.  

In the spiritual journey, the first step toward growth, a deeper experience of community, a greater sense of purpose in participating in God’s work often begins with awareness of a deeper desire, a deeper longing for something more or something different.  

This is a new season for the world as we continue to deal with a pandemic as well as many other important issues. And we are in a time of change in our church as we begin a new era of ministry with our new pastor Hope Lee. Change can bring many emotions to the surface—good and bad—but it can also help us to become aware of what we really want.   

It takes courage to contemplate Jesus’ question, “What do you want me to do for you?” And it might take some time to get below the surface of our circumstances and activities and the swirl of emotions that can come with them. But becoming aware of our deepest longings and naming them before the Lord is the beginning of transformation and healing as we allow him to do in and through and for us what only he can do by his grace and power. 

Bartemaeus’s life was changed. He was blind but now he sees. This change, this transformation moved him to arrange his life to become a follower of Jesus, to learn from him what it means to live life to the fullest in the kingdom of God—to experience the abundant life Jesus promised. This is what God wants for each of us. 

What do you want? What do you really want? Have you clarified that desire? Have you taken this desire to the Lord in prayer? Is this desire motivating you to rearrange your life to find healing and transformation? Is your healing and transformation leading you to follow Jesus and to serve others?  

Knowing what we want is what motivates us to come to Jesus—to keep coming to Jesus. And it motivates us to arrange our lives to follow him and to learn from him. This is what leads to experiencing the abundant life of love, joy, and peace Jesus has already made possible and to help others experience this life too.