He doesn’t seem to me to be a person we could see,
the one who moves, as winds which stroke the feathers on the tree,
without the barest twig of substance, nothing we could hold,
and yet he gets the best of me and shapes me to a mould.

And how he does it, as I read, is by the word revealed,
applied as not by me but by a fortifying shield.
And by this trust, this faith in someone worthy yet unseen,
my likeness daily changes to his pure and holy mien.

It hardly feels I’ve done a thing! I’m blind with outstretched hands.
But what a grasp he has on them! I’m led through undling lands;
the valleys chill and mountains swept will not this vision quell:
that God is known through language shown, and he has spoken well.

Two things are often cited as what sight can not defend:
the Spirit and the faith he guards, by which our way we wend.
Yet what are eyes but lenses for the light of time and space,
which cannot tell the scents of Spring or know the taste of grace?

The eyes are poorly qualified as witnesses to speech
and things beyond the present realm which words and Spirit teach.
And though perhaps the sighted get to read the printed page
the ears have been where hope is learned through every gospel age

And mine will never call a sate or surfeit for the sound
that stirs my soul to worship, and from sin to turn around.
The glory of our God is not for us to see, not yet;
we walk to words, in step, by faith, our hope in Jesus set.