Their Hands Move Too Fast For Me To See

You have watched it four times now and you still cannot see it.

Not the result. The result is obvious. The thing happens and it works and there it is.

What you cannot see is the middle. Somewhere between the beginning and the end there are two or three movements that happen in about a second and a half, and your eyes do not catch them, and afterward you could not describe what occurred.

And each time, the person doing it says, see? And you say yes.

You are not lying exactly. You saw something. You saw a hand move and a thing change. You did not see what you would need to have seen in order to do it yourself tomorrow.

And after four goes you have started to draw a conclusion, and the conclusion is about your eyes, or your age, or the general speed of your mind.

I want to offer a different conclusion, and I think it is the true one.

Nobody has ever slowed down. Four demonstrations at full speed is not four chances. It is the same chance, four times, and it was never going to work on the fourth any more than it did on the first.

He put his hands again upon his eyes

There is a healing in Mark that is unlike any other, because it happens in two goes.

After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. (Mark 8:25, King James Version)

The verse before has the man saying he sees men as trees, walking. Shapes, but not clearly. Something, but not enough.

And Jesus does not tell him to look harder. He does not ask what is wrong with him. He puts his hands on him again.

You are somebody a second touch was made for, and no partial seeing has ever once been treated in Scripture as a failure of the person seeing. Mark 8:25 says he put his hands again upon his eyes, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that ordinary for a woman who has watched something four times.

Notice that nothing in the account suggests the man was slow. Nothing suggests the first touch was inadequate either.

It is simply an account of something taking two goes, recorded without embarrassment, in a book that had every reason to leave it out.

You have a moment in Scripture that was kept in rather than tidied away, and no honest account of something taking twice has ever once been hidden by God. The Holy Spirit is the one who leaves a two stage story in the record, and it is written plainly that the second touch was what completed it.

And notice the result. He saw every man clearly. Not adequately. Clearly.

The second touch was not a patch on a partial job. It was the thing that finished it properly.

You were never going to be left at men as trees walking, and no second attempt has ever once produced a lesser result than a first. The Spirit of God is the one who finishes what was begun rather than settling for the halfway, and Scripture puts the word clearly at the end where nobody can miss it.

Why four demonstrations are one demonstration

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not make hands slow down.

Consider what is actually happening in that second and a half. The person demonstrating has done it ten thousand times. It has stopped being a sequence for them and become one single motion, the way a signature is one motion rather than eleven letters.

They are not going fast to be unhelpful. They cannot go slowly. The slow version does not exist in them anymore, and they would have to reconstruct it deliberately, and nobody has ever asked them to.

You are watching something that has stopped being a sequence for the person doing it, and no fluent motion has ever once been available at half speed by accident. The Spirit of God is the one who explains what is happening rather than grading who is watching, and Mark 8:25 has a second touch given because a first was not the whole of it.

And here is the second half, which is the one that matters. Watching is the wrong sense for this.

Nobody has ever learned a movement by watching it. Not a knot, not a stitch, not a chord. Watching gives you the shape of the finished thing, and the shape of the finished thing is the part you already had.

Nobody ever told you that, and it is a gap in the teaching rather than a gap in you.

You have been using the wrong sense entirely and were never told so, and no amount of watching has ever once taught anybody a movement. The written word records a second touch without one word of blame, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names the real difficulty rather than inventing one.

Seven words, and watch the hands

Now the small thing, and it is seven words.

I am not going to suggest watching more carefully. Watching more carefully is what four attempts already were, and it is the wrong instrument.

Ask for it once more, slowly, in seven words, and watch the hands rather than the screen.

You are able to ask for one slow repetition, and seven words have never once been an imposition on somebody who has already shown you something four times. Mark 8:25 has hands laid on a second time without anybody having to justify it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman asks for the slow version.

Here are the seven words. Can you do that again, really slowly.

Say them plainly. No apology in front. No explanation about your eyes. No joke about being hopeless.

And then look at the hands, not at the screen. That is the other half and it matters as much as the words.

The screen shows the result. The hands show the movement, and the movement is the part that has been missing every single time.

You are looking at the right thing for the first time, and no answer has ever once been found by staring harder at the wrong place. The Spirit of God is the one who turns a person's attention to where the thing actually is, and it is written that the second touch was to the eyes rather than to anything else.