Just keep holding my hand, Lord. Just keep leading me to what You’ve prepared ahead.

He went ahead of them, into the wilderness, making the way plain, opening up impossible routes, providing all they needed, leading and tending, like… a good shepherd…

Like the Good Shepherd Phillip Keller writes about (in A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23) – who goes ahead to “prepare a table”(land) for his sheep – who checks its provision, cleans its water springs, removes poison weeds, spreads around nutrients they’ll need.

He goes ahead of me into the wilderness of vision loss, clears the way and makes it smoother, opens up possibilities I never considered, distributes strengthening evidence of His presence there ahead of time, preparing and supplying things I’ll need.

Yesterday’s post talked about some of them. Now, here’s more:

He prepares me by bringing to my attention blind-person examples, models for when my vision dies.

First and closest: My sweet and spunky mother, who, legally blind at younger age than I, whipped through stores so fast, finding things from memory, that I struggled to keep up with her! I never heard her moaning around about her vision loss.

Then there’s Helen Keller, brought to mind each time I use that mug (last post).

Next: This blind quilter, whose interview video someone emailed me before I learned I’d lose my eyesight.

And finally, this video clip from Philip Groening’s 2006 documentary Into Great Silence, which I stumbled upon by “accident” shortly after I learned what was wrong with my eyes.

As I watched its beginning, it struck me that the old monk on the right, making his way down the corridor, moved like a blind person, feeling his way with some sort of light cane, holding his left arm out as if to avoid collisions. That caught me, so I kept watching, as the clip became an interview with him, in which he spoke of his blindness as a gift from God for which He thanked Him often.

Unfortunately, in this version the Monk’s French is translated into German subtitles, so I could only get fragments with my weak and faulty memory of high school German, but I found an English translation here, at What a Blind Monk Sees.

Specific to me, at the time, and right now, these thoughts he expressed:  

I often thank God that he let me be blinded. I am sure that he let this happen for the good of my soul…  One must (never) part from the principle that God is infinitely good, and that all of his actions are in our best interest. Because of this a Christian should always be happy, never unhappy. Because everything that happens is God’s will, and it only happens for the well-being of our soul… God is infinitely good, almighty, and he helps us. This is all one must do, and then one is happy.” 

Yes.