Seeing God and Singing

John 9:18-41

When we lived near Northampton the market that I went to was in Olney. It was a little market in the centre of the town at the end of the wide high street, the course for the annual pancake race on Shrove Tuesday.

I seldom go to Olney, or pass through and see the tall spire of the church without remembering John Newton its famous curate.

I may not have been an evil slave trader like John Newton but I have had my moments without God, times when there seemed to be nothing behind creation and we are all puppets pulling our own strings. It was an empty life full of me and my plans. Now even though I do not know if I shall be doing later today what I have planned I know that God has a purpose for me and I can see this plan unfolding. I wonder why He moved us to Belgium?

And the connection with this reading- "Was blind but now I see", the famous line from probably the most famous of John Newton's Olney Hymns which he wrote with William Cowper. But my favourite verse is

"When we've been there ten thousand years

Bright shining as the sun

We've no less days to sing God's praise

Than when we first begun."

This image was taken from the Geograph project collection. See this photograph's page on the Geograph website for the photographer's contact details. The copyright on this image is owned by John Winfield and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.