I trace the rainbow....

The day started in polo shirt and shorts. By lunchtime it was pouring and didn't stop.

I remembered...

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

The writer was George Mathieson, a brilliant preacher and theologian who had gone blind at the age of twenty. His fiancé told him that she couldn't go through life married to a blind man.

He wrote:

"My hymn was com­posed in the manse of In­ne­lan [Ar­gyle­shire, Scot­land] on the ev­en­ing of the 6th of June, 1882, when I was 40 years of age. I was alone in the manse at that time. It was the night of my sister’s mar­ri­age, and the rest of the fam­i­ly were stay­ing over­night in Glas­gow. Some­thing hap­pened to me, which was known only to my­self, and which caused me the most se­vere men­tal suf­fer­ing. The hymn was the fruit of that suf­fer­ing. It was the quick­est bit of work I ever did in my life"

The thing is: wouldn't a sighted person have written "I see the rainbow through the rain"? It took a blind man to find that inspired word "trace"!

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