Playing by Faith, Not by Sight
When the eyes go dim, the hands and the heart keep the hymns alive
By Robert Wright | Minister of Music – New Light Baptist Church • Ludden Chapel Baptist Church
“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened…” — Ephesians 1:18
Long before I understood what a gift it was, I watched a blind woman play the Hammond organ for Sunday school. Mrs. Lottie Mae Johnson served at New Tabernacle Baptist Church in my growing-up years. She wasn’t Mrs. Leatrice Morrison, our head organist, and the children knew the difference. We laughed at the way she sounded sometimes — children do that. But Mrs. Johnson knew the hymns of the church, and she played them to the very best of her abilities, by ear and by memory and by faith.
Some years ago, another New Tabernacle member, David Turner, watched his eyesight slip away until it was gone completely. He lives in the Dallas area now. Through the videos his wife, Sheila James Turner, posts on social media, I’ve watched him play — and if you didn’t know he was blind, you wouldn’t know. He learned the keys so thoroughly when he had sight that God has continued to use him in his blindness. The proficiency is still there. The anointing didn’t leave when the eyes did.
Every church musician fears losing a hand or a foot. Losing eyesight is just as much a terror. We read music, we read the room, we read the preacher — and to lose sight is to lose half the instruments we didn’t know we were playing. But Mrs. Johnson and Brother Turner remind us that the music doesn’t live in the eyes. It lives in the years of preparation and the Spirit who fills the gaps.
Paul prayed that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened, and that is the sight a musician truly plays from. Outer sight reads notation; inner sight knows the song. So we keep practicing. We keep learning the hymns by heart. And if the day ever comes that our sight goes out, we play by faith — trusting that if it’s God’s will, He will fill in the gaps.
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