Feb 27, 2020
by Kevin Butler
This year’s Conference theme of “Fix Your Eyes on Jesus” carries a dual meaning. We are called to affix our spiritual gaze on the Lord and follow Him (Hebrews 12:2). We might also need to take some corrective action to improve our physical vision so we can read God’s Word more easily.
Part of my Conference promotion has been asking people to collect older prescription eyeglasses and reading glasses to help those in need. Can those old (and new) pieces of eyewear really do any good?
Here’s some encouraging news that I found at the Zenni Optical website:
“Donating old glasses to charities who help needy people is certainly going to change
lives for the better. It can be difficult to fathom that these days, with so many bargain-priced glasses available on the internet, that anyone wouldn’t be able to buy a pair of eyeglasses. In actuality, many people in developing countries earn less than $1 a day, and according to the World Health Organization, there are an estimated 246 million people who need but cannot afford or access eyeglasses.
“Since old prescription eyeglasses were first created for another person, sometimes it is difficult for charities to find an exact match to help a needy person. Yet, without even as close of a match as possible, many people who need vision correction will have no chance to improve their vision with eyewear, so donating old eyewear is still very important. There are cases in which people were nearly blind, but were then able to see much better thanks to someone donating an old backup pair of glasses that otherwise would have been thrown in the garbage. So it is crucial for old eyewear to be recycled and distributed worldwide.”
Seventh Day Baptists are now an active part of this positive movement! I made a couple of quick Facebook mentions before last summer’s Conference gathering in Pennsylvania and came home with over 100 pairs of glasses.
Since then, we have increased the promotion, providing artwork for signs (available at seventhdaybaptist.org/conference-2020/) for your local collection boxes, and it’s working! THANK YOU to all who have been and will be contributing.
We picked up dozens of glasses at the Lost Creek, WV, church in the fall. I know others are adding to their boxes and plan to bring them to Conference in Grand Rapids this summer.
One pretty miraculous story to share: A member of an outreach group of the Texarkana, AR, SDB Church connected with a woman in Little Rock who collects glasses for overseas missions. Knowing that I would be visiting North Loup, NE, in December, Pastor Dan Richards from Texarkana—stay with me now—arranged to pick up some boxes in Little Rock to drop them off in North Loup, on his way to the Multiply Conference in Colorado. When I left North Loup, my car carried several hundred pairs of glasses back to the SDB Center in Janesville, WI. Those are some well-traveled eyeglasses!
And they’ve only just begun their journey. We hope to send glasses to some of our Conferences in Africa and possibly Central and South America.
Gather up those glasses and help others fix their eyes on Jesus!
Former Conference President Don Graffius shared with me his mission experience in providing eyewear to the needy in Honduras. As part of the “fitting” for the correct prescription, those in charge asked the recipient to read the words of John 3:16 in their native language. Brilliant! That’s a pair of glasses that could truly save a life!