Carrying on from last week’s story I’m asking, “Does God ever run out of good ideas?” Not quite! Because another idea which changed the lives of countless people when it was introduced and is still used today is the system used for blind people to be able to read. In 1824, Louise Braille, a committed Christian invented a system of raised dots on paper, so that
blind people could read. He invented 63 symbols representing every language; hence God’s word was placed into the hands of the visually impaired for the first time.

Then we have the world of communications, in part, you owe your mobile phone and your computer to another Christian named Samuel Morse; how different the world was before him. First class news took two weeks to reach the USA and reports of a major victory could take six weeks to reach Britain before Morse invented his telegraphic code. One day a friend asked
Morse, “When you were experimenting did you ever reach an absolute deadlock, not knowing what to do?” Morse replied, “Yes, more than once.” His friend asked, “So what did you do then?” Morse replied, “I’ll tell you a secret, I got down on my knees and prayed for light and light came and my invention was acknowledged by honours both in Europe and America, but it
was all God’s work.”

Then we have another Christian a Frenchman named Louise Pasteur, the French scientist who showed us that infections were the result of things we cannot see, namely germs and viruses. He introduced sterilisation methods that eventually saved the lives of multitudes of sick people.

Finally, we come to the humble typewriter, the forerunner to the word processer and you are all wondering what the connection is to Christianity. Well actually there is a very close one, as the typewriter was invented to help a local priest with his sermons. The inventor Christopher Sholes, was concerned about his local priest visiting victims of a local epidemic, comforting the bereaved and conducting funerals, leaving little time for him to write his sermons. He had a bad memory and wrote all his sermons out in full, but his writing was so bad that when he stood up to deliver them he couldn’t read his own writing and got very confused. The priest asked his friend if he could invent a quick method of writing that he would be able to read.
After months of hard work he came up with a method of tapping out words onto paper and eventually he approached a firm called Remington with his idea. They soon recognised that this invention could revolutionise business and the rest as they say is history.
God also wants us to bless his business, that of reaching the world with the Gospel.

Don’t tell anyone what you are starting to do. Your strength comes from making a commitment.
You will not know the exact nature of the undertaking until you set it in motion.