In our life, our prayer, and religious observance, one of the things that we always come back to is the reality of our indebtedness to God; we owe everything to God. The other reality is that God owes us nothing. We can pray all we want about receiving healing, forgiveness, or for the grace to forgive. We can hope that, in some way, God will hear us and answer our prayer. However, this is where our desires and needs stop and the true depth and meaning of faith takes over. Faith is not about bargaining with God as if to say, "If I pray to you and live my life in a certain way, you will give me what I want." Our desires and needs may lead us to faith but once we have arrived at a true stance of faith we are like the blind man in today's Gospel reading. The blind man calls out to Jesus in faith not so much as one who can cure him, but as one who can be with him in his blindness. His faith is such that even if he remains blind he knows that Jesus, the Son of David, will hear him. It is the cry for mercy that tells Jesus of the true depth of faith that the man professes. It is not the plea for healing. That comes later. When he is healed, Jesus is quite explicit that it is the man's "blind faith" that is the reason for the gift of sight.

How am I able to spend this day, rooted in the faith that the blind man exhibited? How might this affect my prayer and the way I voice my petitions?