A Curious Scriptural Passage

I was reading in the Bible today an account about Jesus’ healing of a certain blind man, and it struck me as unusual. Here is the passage, Mark 8:22-25, as it appears in the New American Standard Bible:

And they came to Bethsaida And they brought a blind man to Jesus and implored Him to touch him. Taking the blind man by the hand, He brought him out of the village; and after spitting on his eyes and laying His hands on him, He asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around.” Then again He laid His hands on his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and began to see everything clearly.

Isn’t is strange that after the first attempt at healing him, the man was only partially healed? I recall reading other accounts where people were healed completely and instantaneously of all sorts of maladies, and some of these just by their touching the fringe of Jesus’ garment in the midst of a crowd.

In still other cases it is related that Jesus healed people without ever even seeing them. For example in Luke 7:1-10 Jesus healed a centurion’s slave, who was about to die, without even entering the house where the slave was.

So why was the healing of the blind man done gradually, in two steps? Since accounts such as these usually give only few details and no explanation as to why something is done this way or that way, we are left to our own speculation. Perhaps Jesus did it this way purposely to make it easier on the man, allowing him time to adjust, rather than thrusting him from total darkness into the bright light of day in a fraction of a second. Who knows?