“I have macular degeneration, glaucoma and diabetes.  A couple months ago I lost my vision completely.  I woke up one morning and my whole world was rocked.  I went from seeing to nothing.  I had surgery, and for three days I could see with no glasses.  Then on the fourth day when I got up, my world was rocked again.  The only thing I saw was milk.  I mean it was just milky…I couldn’t see anything.  I saw what a person that was totally blind really went through.

I can tell there’s a person in front of me but I can’t tell nothing about you.  Sometimes when we see people, we’re quick to judge them by their outward appearance, whether that’s good, bad or in-between.  But since I’ve lost my vision, I’ve learned to listen to people.  If you’ll listen, they will tell you what kind of person they are…and that leads me to their heart.

In pastoring I’ve told people don’t sit around telling people you know what they’re going through unless you’ve been there…until you’ve walked in their shoes.  Otherwise you’re just blind.  You just don’t really know.  I’ll be honest with you, as a kid I used to joke around with some of my friends.  Let’s park in a handicap and you lead me in like I’m blind.  Guess what [chuckle] ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’  So today I get to park there and have to be led in.

There’s nothing that happens in my life and there’ll be nothing happen in your life that God won’t have a reason in it.  There’s a purpose in everything.  Good, bad or ugly…there’s a purpose in it.  There again that’s when you have to see things through a different vision.  I see things out of a different set of eyes than what I could when I could see with my natural eyes.

My eyesight might be bad, but my vision’s 20/20.”