Comment by Harborough churches: Celebrating all the positives rather than the negatives is a great gift

Viewpoint by Tim Jeffery, CEO of Torch Trust

“There’s never enough time!” How often have you caught yourself thinking or saying that? Or how about “there’s never enough money!”? It seems a pretty common part of our lives to be noticing and lamenting that there’s “not enough”.

In this country, with pandemic and Brexit, it seems that we are going to have to get used to certain shelves in our shops being bare and prices of some things rising significantly. Scarcity is a fact of life.

But it can also become an attitude towards life. It’s a short step from “there’s not enough” to “I’m not enough”. I’m not good enough, slim enough, tall enough, clever enough – we can all add our own “not enough” about ourselves or our lives. What are yours?

As part of my role becoming the leader of Torch Trust, I’ve been meeting lots of people with various degrees of sight loss. Some have been totally blind from birth whilst others have begun struggling with their sight much later in life. What has struck me time and again is their amazingly positive attitude to life.

One chap I spoke to – Dave – had been a volunteer for Torch over many years and done audio recordings of over 500 books so that people with sight loss could enjoy and benefit from them. Quite suddenly a few years ago he rapidly lost the sight in one eye but was reassured that the other one was fine. Then last year, almost overnight, he lost the sight in his other eye. He could no longer live

at home and had to find an emergency place in a residential home. In the space of a few short weeks he went from living independently to being totally blind and being utterly dependent on others to care for him.

When I spoke with Dave, rather than being someone who was bitter about what he’d lost, I found someone who was incredibly upbeat. He didn’t like what had happened but had quickly come to accept it and was focusing on the many positive things that he was finding in his new circumstances.

What shone through was how his faith in a good and caring God was making all the difference. He was overflowing with hope – not that he would somehow regain his sight but that he could face whatever happened because he was so aware of God’s presence with him through the trials.

Rather than having a mindset of scarcity, Dave had one of abundance. What a gift to the world that is! It makes me want to spend more time looking for and celebrating all the positives rather than keep moaning about “not enough”. What could you celebrate today?

Tim Jeffery is CEO of Torch Trust, a national Christian charity for people with sight loss which has its headquarters in Market Harborough.