SIGHT

I thank you, Lord, for the gift of sight.

Not content that I should see light and shade, you have blessed me with the ecstasy of color. A thousand beauties surround me.

I think of the millions of cells lining the back of my eye, each calibrated to its own wavelength of color, each shielded from blinding light by watchful guardians that adjust the pupil size in response to changing light and shade. You designed living lenses, crystal-clear, flexible, and guided by tiny muscles that allow instant and precise focusing.

I praise you for tears that cleanse, and for eyelids poised to blink down protection in a split-second reflex. Lord God, I marvel that, though light never enters my brain, thousands of the finest nerves, each responsive to just one light-perceptive cell, convey images of reality into my mind, which stores them away for future retrieval. At this moment I carry around a memory bank of friends and children and grandchildren; I close my eyes and my mind re-creates the images those nerves once ushered in.

I know many people who can no longer see. If I live beyond the life span of the cells in me that sense the light, or if cataracts cloud the shining globe that gives me sight, I too shall live in shadows and depend on the eyes of those who see.

Help me, dear Lord, to use these days of sight in a way that honors the gift of light. Help me to gaze at each sunset as if it were my last, to look upon scenes and friends with an artist’s eye, compiling a memory bank of beauty and love. If I someday lose your gift of sight, these same images may return and beautify my inner life when all outside falls dark.

And while I see, may my guiding hand be quick to help the one who falters because his world is dark, to share with others the benefits of the gift of sight.

( This litany was written by Dr PAUL BRAND, taken from IN THE LIKENESS of GOD, written by Paul Brand and Philip Yancey, Zondervan, 2004)