Last Saturday I took an eighty five year old lady from a nearby village to a monthly meeting of blind and partially sighted people. She was keen to go and had on previous occasions enjoyed this event, partly because she once lost her sight and is still blind in one eye with poor sight in the other, and partly because it was a Christian meeting and she is a Christian. People who are blind or partially sighted sometimes feel alienated within regular church services so these monthly meetings are especially enjoyable.
But on this occasion there was added enthusiasm because she had been invited to share her “testimony” or her personal story of faith. A horrendous head on accident on the old A50 had left her severely injured and completely blind at the age of 55. It was the thought of blindness that terrified her most and as she was about to undergo the first operation after the accident she asked if the surgeons would give her a moment to pray. Previously she had never given serious thought to God.
Over the next few days, as she lay blind on her hospital bed, she experienced a deep peace she had never known before. Revelling in this strange sense of security it took some days before she realised it was God’s presence she had encountered in answer to her prayer. This, she went on to tell us, had been followed by thirty years of a continual sense of God’s presence, of a living relationship with God and of the bliss and privilege of prayer.
Chuckling like a child she added, “Sharing our testimony is often more powerful than a sermon. People cannot deny the reality of our experience of God. We are like satisfied customers”. I had never heard that term used in this context before but as a “satisfied customer” for the past 48 years I knew exactly what she meant.
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