The Train

I was recently collecting someone from the station. They’d travelled a long way, and I was focussed with their faces in my mind, watching the train pull in, scanning the carriages to see them. When the train stopped, as I stepped forward, I noticed a small lady with a big bag about to get off. Instinctively I wanted to help but then hesitated. In a fraction of a second my brain asked many questions: What if she thought I was going to run off with her bag? What if I frightened her? What if she rebuffed me and I was embarrassed? What if I missed ‘my’ people? After a tiny moment of uncertainty, I turned away and kept looking for ‘my people`.

As it turned out, the little lady was actually one of ‘my people’ too! She’d been partially hidden by others milling about and, without my distance glasses on, I hadn’t recognised her. Someone else had been allocated to collect her but that could just as easily have been me. We all had a lovely reunion on the station platform when we realised there were more of us gathered than we’d expected.

But I was left feeling a bit sad. Sad that a ‘fear of getting it wrong’ or ‘being misunderstood’ or ‘social norms’ or missing what I was ‘supposed to be doing’ had stopped me from helping someone who actually needed it. In this instance, I’d even missed the joy of coming closer and recognising a friend!

Because I do know her, I know that this particular lady would have welcomed assistance from anyone. She would have been grateful to be noticed as in need and delighted that someone had stepped out of the busy crowd to help her. Maybe ‘anyone’ would.

But I’d allowed societal worries to get in the way of simple kindness. In all honesty, in a very mundane way, I’d allowed fear to overcome love. I’d not done something for one of ‘the least’ of God’s children and so, not done it ‘for Him’.

The situation was over in a moment with no lasting ill effect to anyone. It made me wonder, where the other things are that make me hesitate and stop me in my tracks which then interfere with God bringing blessing through me.