And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me-Mark 10:47. Jesus was now on His last journey to Jerusalem. That night He would sleep at Bethany: Calvary was but a week off. He had paused to save Zacchaeus, and now He has resumed His march to His Cross. Popular enthusiasm is surging around Him, and for the first time He does not try to repress it. A shouting multitude are escorting Him out of the city. They have just passed the gates, and are in the act of turning towards the mountain gorge through which ran the Jerusalem road. A long file of beggars is sitting, as beggars do still in Eastern cities, outside the gate; well accustomed to lift their monotonous wail at the sound of passing footsteps. Bartimaeus is among them. He asks, according to Luke, what is the cause of the bustle, and is told that “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” [see Luke 18:37]. The name wakes strange hope in him, which can only be accounted for by his knowledge of Christ’s miracles done elsewhere. It is a witness to their notoriety that they had filtered down to the talk of beggars at city gates. And so, true to his trade, he cries, “Jesus . . . have mercy upon me!” In the cry there throbs the sense of need, deep and urgent; in it there is also the realization of the possibility that the widely flowing blessings of which Bartimaeus had heard might be concentrated and poured, in their full flood, upon himself. He individualizes himself, his need, Christ’s power and willingness to help him. And, because he has heard of so many who have, in like manner, received His healing touch, he comes with the cry, “Have mercy upon me.” All this is upon the low level of physical blessings, need, and desire. But let us lift it higher. It is a mirror in which we may see ourselves, our necessities, and the example of what our desire ought to be. The deep consciousness of inadequacy, need, emptiness, blindness, lies at the bottom of all true crying to Jesus Christ. If you have never-knowing yourself to be a sinful man, in peril, present and future, from your sin, and stained and marred by reason of it-gone to Jesus Christ, you never have gone to Him in any deep sense at all. Only when I know myself to be a sinful man am I driven to cry, “Jesus! Have mercy on me.” And I ask you not to answer it to me, but to press the question on your own consciences- “Have I any experience of such a sense of need; or am I groping in the darkness and saying, I see; weak as water, and saying I am strong?” “Thou knowest not that thou art poor, and naked, and blind” [Rev. 3:17]; and so that Jesus of Nazareth should be passing by has never moved thy tongue to call, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” In Celebration of Life in Him, Dr. Jim DeBruhl, gembeaux@bellsouth.net " Everything is wrong until God makes it right,"
