Dan Eakin/Baptist Minister
I have never been very good at writing poetry. When I was a teenager I wrote a few poems, but none of them were ever of the highest quality.
When I was about 40 years, old, I told my congregation the story of a blind woman who had found a unique way of reading Scripture after she could no longer use her hands and fingers to read Braille.
Many in that congregation seemed very touched by the story, and some even shed a few tears. The next day, as I drove a long distance to a job, I thought how that story might be even more effective if created as a poem. During that trip, I made up this poem and wrote it down when i got to work. I hope you are blessed by it.
SHE READ IT WITH A KISS
Mary was a loving girl, tender, sweet and kind.
She never had a bitter thought, though she had been born blind.
When she was just a little girl, she heard the old, old storyof how Jesus came, lived, died and arose, and then went back to glory.
She loved for folks to tell of Him who could meet her very need,
for hearing was her only way because she was blind and couldn’t read.
Then for a while she went to school, and learned to read in Braille,
but still she had no book which told of HIm who promised not to fail.
Then a friend gave her a gift in Braille, which brightened up her dark;
Mary called it her “Bible,” but it was just the book of Mark.
She read the book so many times, while feeling her Lord so real, that the endings in her fingertips lost their sense of feel.
While holding the book one night, her dark eyes filled with tears,
She thought of how it had been a light through many sightless years.
Up to her trembling lips she pulled the book she’d sure miss,
“Goodbye, precious Word of God,” she said, and gave it a holy kiss.
But as her “Bible” touched her lips, she had the realization that her lips could feel those dots of Braille with wonderful sensation.
The book she thought she’d read no more, brought her further joy instead, for in her remaining years, she kissed it as she read.
Perhaps we with sighted eyes, should love God’s Word like this, and read His “love letter” every day, and seal it with a kiss.
Dan Eakin is a native of DeQueen, Arkansas. He has pastored rural Baptist churhces all across Northeast Texas and Southeastern Oklahoma for more than 60 years. He can be contacted at daneakin_2000@yahoo.com.