Comment by Harborough churches: I am trying to be more grateful for what I have got

Viewpoint by Tim Jeffery, CEO of Harborough-based Torch Trust

I recently had the privilege of visiting Malawi to see the work that Torch Trust does there with blind people. You may recall that in early 2022 there were cyclones and severe flooding that swept through southern Malawi and into Mozambique.

The area of Malawi worst affected is the low lying Shire valley in the south of the country.

That just happens to be an area where the incidence of blindness is very high due to a disease prevalent around the Shire River. Thousands of people were made homeless and saw their possessions, houses and crops washed away. It must be frightening to have to flee for your life as flood waters sweep through but imagine how much more terrifying when you can’t see.

Thanks to the generosity of many people, Torch was able to provide emergency food to sustain over 350 families as they worked to return their lives to some kind of normality.

Whilst in Malawi, I visited the affected area to see for myself the flood devastation and to meet some of the people we were able to help.

After a couple of hours in a rusty old Land Rover including an hour on bumpy, corrugated roads, we got close to our first stop and began to hear the beautiful, uplifting sound of African voices singing. Dozens of blind people and their carers had gathered under a huge tree and were singing and dancing and clapping their welcome. What a sound! What joy on their faces!

Here were desperately poor people, marginalised by their disability and who had recently been through the trauma of losing even the little they had. Yet they oozed joy as they sang hymns, danced, laughed and expressed their gratitude and their faith and trust in God.

In comparison to theirs, my life and the lives of most of the people I know, are incredibly stable and rich. And yet how often are our conversations filled with the doom and gloom of the rising cost of living, or drought, or an array of other issues and problems? It’s not that those aren’t very real issues for us but somehow these poor, blind folk of Malawi could rise above their circumstances in a way I find little evidence of here.

So one of the things I’m trying to do is be deliberately more thankful. Looking for things to be grateful for. Expressing gratitude more readily to the people I live and work with. It reminds me of one of the shortest verses in the Bible which simply says “Be thankful”.

Picturing those amazing people in Malawi helps and it’s a pretty good antidote to all the challenges we face and a fab recipe for wellbeing. Why not try it?

Tim Jeffery is CEO of Harborough-based Torch Trust