The pandemic, undiscriminating in its cruelty, has claimed the life of Captain Sir Tom Moore, aged 100.
This was no ordinary life. Most of us, by the age of 99 might be thinking it was now for us to bide our time and be grateful for long life. But not this man: his last year of life was his legacy. That legacy was to raise £40m for the NHS. He walked. He couldn’t walk far, so he walked in his garden. He succeeded: not just in walking the extra mile, but in inspiring millions of people not to let their circumstances limit their imaginations. Just like Jesus at the wedding at Cana, turning the water of scarcity into the wine of abundance, Captain Tom turned limitation and isolation into generosity and possibility.
Captain Tom’s witness is a challenge to all of us. We can be fixated by what the pandemic has deprived us of, or we can turn out attention to what we yet have, sometimes in abundance. Most of us are quick to lament, bewailing the economic, health and social privations of this long wilderness, and focus on our own frustrations. Not Captain Tom: like the little boy at the feeding of the 5000, he had little – but that little turned out to be more than enough; instead of dismissing healthcare because it was too late for it to help him, he realised what it could do to help others; rather than reflect on his own powerlessness, he perceived how it could catalyse the agency of a nation.
This is our choice, every day: to see the emptiness of what we can’t do and can’t have, or to see how our weakness can be the Holy Spirit’s opportunity. Captain Tom chose the better path. Long after the pandemic is over, his example will speak to us, every day.
Revd Dr Sam Wells
