Fingerprints of God’s Love
A conversation with Ginny Owens
Majoring in music education at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, Ginny Owes was looking forward to being a high school music teacher. While her classmates pursued the spotlight, Owens felt content with her “safer” career choice.
The talented singer/songwriter says she considered a career as a recording artist for “maybe a split second.” Nevertheless, Owens found herself being discovered and signed by Michael W. Smith’s Rocketown label in 1998.
Today, the 2000 Dove Award winner for New Artist of the Year has four studio albums under her belt—with four Top Five Christian radio singles.
Owens is also blind. A congenital eye disease stole her sight at the age of 2. Earlier this year Owens began her own nonprofit venture to assist humanitarian efforts nationwide. The Fingerprint Initiative seeks to bring hope to children through partnerships with other nonprofit agencies.
To mark this week’s release of her latest album, Long Way Home, Owens is sponsoring a Habitat for Humanity home for a family with disabilities.
Owens spoke recently with Pentecostal Evangel Assistant Editor Ashli O’Connell.
PE: What the most rewarding part of this career for you?
Owens: That God would choose to use my music to encourage and impact other is huge. It makes me realize how small I am, how big the world is and how great people’s needs are. We all have our private suffering and our own journeys that we’re on, but God calls us to be in community with each other. And my job in that community—in the body of Christ—is to write music that encourages people and comforts them and maybe challenges them to consider something that they hadn’t considered before. And I love that I get to live life and then write it down in song form and share it with people. That’s the most wonderful part of it.
PE: Is there a downside to that?
Owens: It’s very scary to put your heart on paper and then wait to see if people like it or not. I’m a very private person, so it’s challenging as much as it’s rewarding to live in a community where your heart is open for everybody to read.
PE: Your lyrics reflect such a beautiful way of looking at the world. Do you think your blindness has helped you to see things more clearly than perhaps those with sight do?
Owens: Because of the circumstances that each of us has been given, we all have a different perspective on the world. I don’t know that I see it better or more deeply; I think I just see it differently. When you have a disability—an obvious flaw that other people notice—then you always have to deal with people in a different way. Growing up being on the outside so much gave me a lot of insight into people. I was always observing and watching, though not with my eyes, and usually quiet. I think I have some different insights into people and into life because I have been forced to listen most of my life.
PE: Was there ever a time, because of your blindness, that you were afraid you couldn’t do this?
Owens: Oh yeah, I think that every day? My mom said to me once when I was little that there were going to be days when Jesus was my best friend and there would be days when He would be my only friend. Even in my adult life, that’s how I feel sometimes. There are days when I get up and I am just so overwhelmed. Everything from how am I going to get to the grocery store to how am I going to get up on stage again? A lot of that fear is probably due more to my personality than to my disability. Satan likes to throw things at us that sound like they could be true: I’m difference; I stick out like a sore thumb; nobody will ever see me as a whole person. I have those days all the time.
PE: How do you fight those fears?
Owens: Anytime we have a negative idea in our hearts—that we’re unable or too disabled to do something—we have to know that that is not coming from the Lord. That is not something that God, who created the universe and created each of us with our own unique set of circumstances, would speak to our hearts. The only way to get beyond those thoughts is to have time every day to remind ourselves what God really does say about us, and who He says we are, and how much He loves us. One of the things I’ve learned is that there are always voices to listen to and there’s always going to be one voice that’s louder than the others, and it’s kind of our choice what the loudest voice is. If we don’t take time to be still and be quiet to listen to God speaking to us, and to read His Word, then we’re going to hear the voices of doubt more loudly.
PE: You’ve got a pretty busy schedule. How do you maintain that consistency of time alone with God?
Owens: It’s just a matter of priority. This is the most important thing; this is what I must do. It’s just simply about making it happen one day at a time.
PE: What inspired you to start The Fingerprint Initiative?
Owens: There’s a song on my record Beautiful called “I Love the Way.” And there’s a line in that song that says “Catching glimpses of Your mysteries, I find your fingerprints on everything.” I love the idea that God’s fingerprints are everywhere. Not only in nature, but in our lives. He touches us with His grace and His goodness and His love, and how much more does He call and challenge us to go out and touch the rest of the world with that goodness and love? Through this project, we want to leave our fingerprints and God’s fingerprints on the lives of others.
Reprinted with permission from Pentecostal Evangel.
