Christian Comment with Rev. Alisdair Longwill ‘Connect’ group, Bussage (& the West of England Baptist Association)

HAVING just returned to the UK from our recent holiday, my wife, clutching her £5 note in hand, was waiting in a mid-length queue at the Birmingham airport coffee shop.

Things were moving rather slowly, mainly due to an overseas visitor to our shores who was trying to understand why he couldn’t buy his coffee with the £5 note he held in his hand.

After several attempts by the barrista to explain that the tourist’s £5 note was an, ‘old one’, my wife gave the ‘visitor’ her current £5 note and eventually he and she were successfully re-caffeinated.

It was a modest random act of kindness – but it made a difference to this visitor to our country.

Not to mention the length of the queue!

As I reflected on this, I was reminded of a vaguely similar situation that took place some 10 or more years ago, when I found myself in the queue of a small in-town supermarket, behind a young woman who was buying a few groceries.

When the cashier totalled up her shopping, the woman didn’t have enough money to pay her modest bill, and for whatever reason (and I genuinely can’t remember any more details), neither I nor anyone else could summon up the generosity or creativity to do anything to help her in her dilemma.

She was left to embarrassingly work out and leave behind what items she least needed or could least afford and settle her by that time, very modest bill and rather sheepishly slink out of the shop.

A small random act of kindness could have made a difference for her – but I (and others) missed the opportunity.

In recent weeks and months, we in the UK have seen various unexpected acts of kindness – taxi drivers driving people home or to a place of safety without charge following the Manchester bombing; people seeking to protect those being attacked in the Borough Market terror; and neighbours and ‘strangers’ supplying food, water, clothing, bedding and temporary accommodation to those traumatised and those bereaved because of the Glenfell Tower fire.

These expression of kindness are heart-warming and restore within us a sense of solidarity and faith in humankind.

They remind us of the continuing wisdom and power of the words of Jesus Christ, who said that the greatest thing we could do, after loving God with all we’ve got, is to ‘love our neighbours as we love ourselves’.

Just think of the difference it would make if you and I did this – if we all did this?

Not just in the extreme and most harrowing situations of life, but also in the everyday stuff – even such mundane situations as queuing to pay for our (or our neighbour’s?) shopping.