The Man Who Prayed But Was Too Blind to See

In this story, we discover that a village was rapidly flooding as the nearby river breaks its bunds.

By Khen Lim



Image Source: windsorstar.com

Water was flowing into the village so quickly that many people resorted to either beating a hasty retreat to higher ground or remaining put where they climbed trees or worked themselves to the roofs.

One of them was a man who decided to go into prayer and asked God to save him from being drowned. In other words, he was looking for a miracle.

As he perched himself on the rooftop of a house, the flood level slowly rose. Time was running out but he remained faithful, trusting that God would answer him. Out of the blue, a boat arrived at his rooftop and as others began to board, he decided against it. He recognised the person manning the boat and recalled how he disliked his behaviour and detested the way he conducted himself. So he waved the boat away, confident that the boat was not sent by God.

Twenty minutes later, the flood level was now past the top of the window frames. In less than two hours, it would reach the roofline. Around the corner, another boat already with passengers arrived. There was still room for him to jump onboard but he found the boat dirty and felt uncomfortable with some of the passengers. He recognised them from the village up the hillock, a community he found unfriendly to him. So even though there was at least one seat left, he refused the offer.

Another boat came by and he found something else wrong with it. Yet another also came and there would be a litany of other reasons not to go with them. Inevitably there was nowhere to run. The flood engulfed all the roof-tops in the village and since he could not swim, he drowned, probably asking why God had not answered his prayer.

This is possibly not an original story but nonetheless, it is a useful one to demonstrate how sometimes we can be so blind that we cannot recognise God coming to our rescue even as we pray for Him to help. He can come and be right in front of us and we still don’t see or recognise Him. Very aptly, Jesus says in Mark 8:18 (ISV), “Do you have eyes but fail to see? Do you have ears but fail to hear?”

As He said in Luke 5:31, the Son of God came to heal those who are sick but then all were found in need. We are all sick! We are all in a desperate position to be saved from all the ills around us. The Israelites knew that. The Pharisees, Sadducees and every Jew neither saw nor realised Jesus’ purpose. All they saw was someone interfering, irritating and ruining their authoritarian control over the people. And for that, they decided He had to pay with His life.

The period of the New Testament was not a peaceful or quiet one. Far from it. Set against the backdrop of centuries of hate-filled power struggles and culturally enforced shifts, the Jews constantly found themselves in the cauldron of fire, looking desperately for the Messiah to save them but despite whatever Jesus did to reveal Himself to them, those in power within the Sanhedrin were too blind and deaf to understand the truth that He brought.