#WorldBookDay, sight loss, and the best-selling book ever written

I remember aged nine on holiday in Cornwall being totally absorbed by my first reading of Lord of the Rings. And as a young man, one book that stood out was Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline which I re-read many times and can now recognise the impact it has had on my journey with the Lord over many decades.

And to bring it right up to date, I’m currently reading and loving Robert Mulholland’s classic on discipleship: Invitation to a Journey. Over the years I’ve been utterly absorbed in brilliant storytelling and challenged, humbled and stretched in my faith time and again. And then there’s the best-selling, life-changing, most amazing book of all – the Bible.

I couldn’t begin to count the number of times through my life that the Lord has used the scriptures to be the means by which He has spoken powerfully into my life. How many countless millions of people through the ages can testify to the myriad ways God has spoken to them, comforted, encouraged and turned them around through the gift that keeps on giving: scripture?

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Over the last couple of years as I’ve begun working with Torch Trust, I’ve come to appreciate the gift of the Bible and Christian literature even more. As I’ve met people who’ve been blind from birth or whose sight has deteriorated later in life, as well as being more thankful for the books that have shaped me, I’ve realised just how much I’ve taken access to those books for granted.

Surely someone who is blind or losing their sight should have the same access to the life-giving word of God and the wonderful array of Christian literature as I do? As followers of the radically inclusive Jesus, it is absolutely the church’s responsibility to make sure the riches of our faith are accessible to everyone.

As part of the body of Christ, a central part of the ministry of Torch Trust is making the Bible and the best Christian materials accessible to people with a visual impairment. Torch Trust started in 1959 to make the Bible available in braille for a group of blind young people.

These days we continue to produce thousands of paper copies of books, Bible reading notes and Christian magazines in braille, large print and giant print but also now in various audio formats on USB sticks, CDs, downloadable files and so on. Imagine it was you losing your sight, no longer able to read your Bible, daily notes or Christian books and then the joy as someone points you to Torch Trust where you can once again get hold of these resources in a format you can use.

As John began losing his sight one of the things that he missed the most was reading: ​“I had a library full of books and I couldn’t read any of them! So now from Torch I have the Daily Bread Bible reading notes every month and loads of Christian books which I like to call ​‘sermon fodder’ because they give me a lot of ideas! And sometimes, with apologies to Torch, I don’t send the books back for ages because I’m reading and rereading them, using them for my sermons. The other thing I really like is updates from Torch on a CD which is absolutely brilliant.”

On average, 250 people a day in the UK are given the life-changing news that they’re losing their sight. Stop for a minute to picture that. That’s a relatively big church congregation every day! While good medical and practical help is available to people to make the necessary adjustments, less than one in five are offered any kind of emotional support or counselling to come to terms with what can be a devastating diagnosis. As well as providing accessible Christian literature to people with sight loss, Torch Trust has always had a passion to reach out to people experiencing sight loss with the transforming love of Jesus.

One new way we are doing that is to offer anyone in the UK who is losing their sight a free audio Bible player.This simple-to-use device has David Suchet reading the New Testament and Psalms and our very own Marilyn Baker reading the Lord’s Prayer and singing three of her latest songs. If you know someone who is experiencing sight loss and would like one of these free audio Bibles, please point them to torchtrust​.org/​p​a​thway

And if you like the idea of making the word of God available to people at a crucial point in their lives, then click on the same link and sponsor an audio Bible player.

I’m of a generation who grew up with physical books as the only option and despite having a Kindle and sometimes listening to audiobooks, I still like having paper in my hands. But there’s nothing inherently right or better about one format over another, after all, we have a faith that is rooted in an aural tradition and in cultures where story-telling and verbal exposition were the norm. On World Book Day, we should celebrate the wonderful breadth and richness of the books we have available but also embrace and find a way of contributing to the growing choice of resources which allow more people than ever access to the treasures of our faith.