every tuesday morning at 10:00 i have a meeting called intern development. it generally lasts about two hours and it involves me, the middle school intern, my boss, and the middle school pastor. sometimes our meeting consists of working through a book on leadership and discussing it and everything that goes with it. other times we’ve gone out for breakfast and talked about the things that come up while working in the position that we are in. one time we even went and played disc golf as a staff just to hang out and get away for a little bit.

yesterday we did something a little different.

we’re not reading through a book and it was raining like noah was coming back so we couldn’t play disc golf. instead, we all read the same passage of scripture, studied over it for a few minutes, journaled a little bit, and then we talked about what we read. it was only about eight verses but we spent a good hour just talking about it.

before i go any further and get to my main point of this post, i just want to say that reading and discussing the bible with other people is one of my favorite things to do. it’s how the bible was meant to be read and studied. i learned so much from the other three guys at the table and their perspectives. i like to think i’m pretty decently smart but they brought three other points of view at the scene and through those, i was able to see a lot of really cool things that i otherwise would’ve missed. anyway, back to my main point…

in this passage there was a blind beggar sitting on the side of the road. jesus and his crowd were walking by on their way to passover. the blind beggar began calling out to jesus over and over until finally jesus sent his people over to the blind beggar to bring him over. (side note #2: i could write an entire blog post on just that but i won’t.)

after jesus’ people went to the blind beggar and told him that jesus wanted him, he obviously went over to where jesus was. while standing there, jesus looks at him and asks him one question:

what do you want?

stop. right there. just stop. think about that for a second. jesus, the son of god, fully god, able to do anything, looked at this blind beggar and asked him to name what he wanted. i don’t know about you, but i have a hard time answering what i want for dinner when someone asks me straight up “what do you want?” the god of the universe was asking this guy what he wanted and expecting an answer.

this whole idea of “what do you want?” became a sticking point that we talked about for quite a bit of time. it’s a really, really hard question. we went around the table and each talked a little about what we would ask for. well, we talked about it once we actually figured out what it may be. much like the blind beggar, i think that i would ask for vision, but i think it’d be a different type of vision.

i’d like to be able to see the next step.

i’d like to be able to see where i’ll be after june.

i’d like to be able to see where i’m going to spend my next 2-5 years.

as someone who likes to look for the future, being an intern is a somewhat frustrating position to be in. don’t get me wrong, i love my job, my students, and my church but the idea of not being able to plan to stay in a place for 3-4 years (or longer) is something that is very tough to do. i’d love to stay exactly where i am until my freshmen graduate but i don’t know if that’s what will happen. add to that the fact that me and nicole would like to get married sometime within the next year or two and the whole thing gets even tougher.

knowing all of this, i think that my answer to jesus when asked, “what do you want?” would be that i want to see. i don’t need to see everything. i don’t even want to see everything. that would just confuse me and mess me up even more. i’d just like to see 2-3 steps in front of me.

my question to you now is “what would your answer be?” if jesus stood in front of you and asked you “what do you want?” how would you respond? do you even know? would it be something that you could do on your own or would it be something that only he could do?

this whole principle is one that i think is very interesting and very entertaining. you find out a lot about yourself when you sit and think about what the one thing you’d ask jesus for is. take some time today, whether it’s in the car driving, after school, or sitting on the toilet, and think about what you would ask jesus for if he gave you that question.

and then ask for it.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan