Personal Blogs

“If the brief meeting of a stranger can awaken in us a longing that this world has no time to satisfy, perhaps we were made for a place where no good meeting ends in goodbye.”

Where No Good Meeting Ends in Goodbye

My wife and I were wandering around Princess Square in Glasgow with that pleasant little problem familiar to anyone surrounded by restaurants: too much choice. We looked at one menu, then another. Perhaps Italian? Maybe something light? Possibly somewhere we had eaten before? All the while, I am balancing these ordinary decisions with the reality of pancreatic cancer, so choosing what and where to eat can sometimes feel like a decision of rather more than ordinary importance.

Then, quite unexpectedly, lunch ceased to be the most interesting thing happening.

We met a family from Lahore in Pakistan who were visiting Glasgow. There was nothing dramatic about the encounter, no great event to report; we simply began talking. Yet almost immediately there was a warmth about them that caught my attention, one of those difficult-to-define moments when strangers somehow cease to feel entirely strange.

I have a custom when I leave home each day: I often pray that God will bring someone across my path. I realise that may sound unusual to some people, but I have done it for years, and remarkably often someone appears. Not necessarily someone who needs anything from me, nor someone to whom I have something profound to say. Sometimes it is simply another human being whom, for reasons I cannot entirely explain, I am glad to have met. This family was like that.

What particularly moved me were the son and daughter. They were respectful and attentive while we spoke. There was none of that sense that the younger members of the family were merely waiting impatiently for the adults to finish. They were present; they listened and participated in that quiet way. When eventually we parted, every member of the family shook our hands.

It was such a small thing: a handshake, a smile, a few words exchanged between people whose lives, until that moment, had been unfolding thousands of miles apart. Yet something had happened. For a few minutes, the categories by which we so often arrange humanity became unimportant. Pakistani and Scottish, visitor and resident, Muslim and Christian perhaps; whatever our differences might have been, they did not need to disappear for us to recognise something more fundamental in one another. Here was another family: parents who loved their children, young people being raised with courtesy and dignity, human beings making their way through the strange and beautiful business of life, just as we were.

Then came the part of such encounters that has always troubled me a little. We said goodbye, they walked one way through Princess Square and we walked another, and within moments the crowd had swallowed them up. It is one of the peculiar sorrows of human life that we can sometimes feel an immediate affection for people we are almost certain never to see again. For a few minutes two stories touch, and then they separate.

They will return home carrying their memories of Scotland, while my wife and I will return to our own life. Their children will grow older. Years will pass. There will be birthdays and joys, disappointments and discoveries, marriages perhaps, children perhaps, and all the unexpected turns that make up a human life. Whole chapters will be written in their story of which we shall know absolutely nothing. And yet, for those few minutes in Glasgow, our stories crossed.

Why should that affect us? Why should someone who was a stranger only minutes before leave behind a faint sense of loss when they disappear? Perhaps there is something within us that protests against the brevity of human connection. We are forever meeting people for whom there is not enough time. We discover a kindness just as the conversation must end. We glimpse something admirable in another person just as the train arrives, the holiday finishes, the meal ends, or somebody glances at the clock and says, “Well, we must be going.” In a curious way, we spend our lives beginning relationships that time does not allow us to finish.

For those of us who believe in God, there is another possibility; some encounters are not meant to be possessed or prolonged; they are simply meant to be received. A stranger does not have to become a lifelong friend for the meeting to have meaning. God may occasionally allow two human lives to touch briefly so that each might carry away a little evidence of the goodness in the other.

That family from Lahore gave me such a gift in Princess Square. They reminded me that goodness does not belong to one nationality, one culture or one corner of the earth. We encounter it in parents and children, in courtesy and attentiveness, in hospitality and humour, and in the simple willingness to stop and recognise the humanity of someone whose life may be very different from our own.

I am convinced that strange sadness we sometimes feel when good people disappear into the crowd is telling us something. If the brief meeting of a stranger can awaken in us a longing that this world has no time to satisfy, perhaps we were made for a place where no good meeting ends in goodbye.

I cannot know whether I will ever see that family again, and in the ordinary course of things I probably will not. But my belief  has taught me to be careful with the word never. There is something wonderfully unfinished about the Christian understanding of human life: goodbye need not necessarily mean the end of the story.

For now, I am simply grateful that among all those people moving through Princess Square that day, our paths crossed. My wife and I had gone in looking for somewhere to eat, studying menus and wondering what might satisfy our hunger. Yet we came away having received something that was never written on any menu: a brief encounter with strangers who, for a few precious minutes, did not feel like strangers at all.

Written by Jim, with editorial assistance from ChatGPT.

Care For the Human Family

I popped into the supermarket this morning for a few bottles of Scottish spring water ahead of a long train journey. I’ve always begrudged the price of water in stations and cafés—it feels like such a small necessity made unnecessarily costly. So, I stood there, bottles in hand, quietly satisfied with my small act of thrift.

At the checkout, the man in front of me was searching his pockets, his wallet, his coat—his loyalty card nowhere to be found. There was a kind of gentle frustration about him, the sort we all recognise.

“I did that recently,” I said, almost without thinking. “Got all the way to the checkout and realised I’d left my credit card at home.” I smiled. “A woman behind me insisted on paying for my shopping.” I continued.

The cashier looked up and nodded. She spoke about how often she sees small kindnesses like that—quiet, unannounced, but real. For a moment, the three of us were strangers sharing something unseen but understood.

But then, as these things sometimes do, the conversation shifted. It deepened.

We spoke about the world as it is—fractured, hurried, often self-absorbed. And there was an unspoken question hanging between us: if kindness is not taught, not lived, not passed on, then where will it come from? Who will show the next generation what it looks like?

It felt less like a complaint and more like a calling.

There was something about the cashier—not dramatic, nothing outwardly remarkable—but a quiet sincerity. The kind you recognise not with your eyes, but somewhere deeper. I found myself mentioning a book my wife had listened to a few months ago.

“It’s about human kindness,” I said. “It’s called A Knock at the Door.”

I encouraged her to look it up, though I suspect what mattered more was not the title itself, but the idea behind it—that kindness is not abstract. It is lived. It arrives, often unexpectedly, in the ordinary spaces of life. A checkout queue. A passing conversation. A moment where someone chooses to care.

And so I extend that same invitation beyond that small exchange.

To you, the reader.
To my family.
To my friends and neighbours.

Pause, if only for a moment. Seek out something that reminds you of what it means to be human in the best sense. Let it reshape how you see the world—not as it is at its worst, but as it might yet become through small, faithful acts of kindness.

In thinking about that book, I came to learn more about its author, Rob Parsons. Years ago, he founded a charity called Care for the Family. It stands quietly in the background of people’s lives, offering strength where it is most needed.

Rooted here in the UK, yet reaching far beyond it, their work is centred on walking alongside families—particularly in moments when life feels fragile or uncertain. They support parents, couples, and those carrying the deep and often silent weight of loss.

Sometimes that support comes through gatherings or courses. Sometimes through a voice on a podcast. And sometimes, perhaps most powerfully, through the simple presence of someone willing to listen.

What they offer is thoughtful and accessible, shaped not just by theory but by lived experience—by an understanding of how complex and tender family life can be.

And just as importantly, they invest in others. They equip those who care for families—whether in formal roles or in quiet, unseen ways—to do so with greater confidence and compassion.

It is, at heart, a work of coming alongside.

Steady. Practical. Deeply human.

And that is what stayed with me most as I left the supermarket, water bottles in hand, stepping back into the ordinary rhythm of the day.

Kindness does not need a stage.
It only needs a willing heart.

And maybe, just maybe, that is how we begin to mend what feels broken.