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Natalie’s fingers pressed lightly upon the page. She was slow – so slow, and the effort of analyzing each of the little bumps on the page wore her down. It hardly seemed worth it. After months of study, she was still like a kindergarten student learning the alphabet. She’d been laboring for half an hour and yet she didn’t comprehend a single word. The little bumps were meaningless.
“It’ll come, Nat. Just keep plugging away” her teacher, Martha encouraged.
Natalie missed a lot of things these days: sunsets and sun rises; the faces of her sister and mother; the view of the flower garden out the back window; the ability to read. Natalie thought longingly of the days when she could read a hundred pages in a day, comprehending all of it. Her life was strewn with books, magazines, computer printouts, and newspapers. But what she missed most was reading her Bible.
She went to it now and held it between her hands. Her fingers had grown more sensitive with the study of Braille, and she lightly swept them across the grainy leather. If only she could see it. If only she could read it. It contained a lifetime of notations and verses highlighted in yellow – all precious with personal meaning. Going through the tragedy had been especially hard, because in the past, she had always turned to her Bible for comfort. Now it was closed to her.
Her sister had given her an audio Bible after the accident, but it just wasn’t like reading it for yourself. How did you underline passages that struck you or savor a single verse, rolling it over in your mind slowly? If only I had memorized more Scripture, she thought. If only…
“Oh, God, help me to read your word. Help me, please. I miss seeing Your words. Please, oh please!” Natalie’s eyes still worked for crying. Tears brimmed over and ran down her cheeks.
Forlornly she went back to her page of Braille. Martha had given her a page printed with ten Bible verses. So far she had not been able to identify a single one. She’d learned the symbols but for some reason her mind balked at putting them together into words and sentences. Her fingers ran over the first letter. Big bump, little bump on top, little bump big bump beneath, and finally, at the bottom Big bump little bump. It was an “o”. She continued down the row, trying to remember. And suddenly it popped into her mind. “O taste and see that the Lord is good!”
“Taste and see! Use all of your senses, Natalie. Find Me!” She could almost hear God’s voice in that instant. Eagerly her fingers traveled the lines. It was coming slowly, but she was reading! Verse after verse opened before her eager hands.
Natalie’s fingers danced up and down the page, touching the little bumps and repeating the verses. One after the other she figured them out. They seemed to hold new meaning as she not only read the words but actually felt them. They seemed to seep through her fingers and become part of her. The frustrating little bumps now seemed like a road map to God's heart. Tears poured down her face again. She was reading! She was touching the Words of Life.
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