When Strangers Leave Footprints on the Heart
In the great theatre of life, there are people who walk onto the stage for only a little while and yet, somehow, never quite leave us. We may not remember every detail of the day on which we met them, or even their names, but we remember what they did. More than that, we remember how they made us feel. Years pass, circumstances change, faces fade from view, and still these people remain in some quiet chamber of the heart.
I think of a man from my sixties childhood who gave us a half-crown and told us hungry youngsters to go and buy ourselves an ice cream. To another person it might have seemed a small gesture, hardly worth remembering, but to a hungry child generosity has a different weight. That coin bought more than ice cream. For a brief moment it told us that somebody had noticed us, that somebody cared whether we had a little happiness that day. The ice cream disappeared long ago, but strangely enough, the kindness never did.
Then I remember two young schoolteachers from Södertälje in Sweden whom I met aboard the Princess of Scandinavia in the mid nineties when I was young as she made her way from Newcastle to Gothenburg. We were strangers brought together by nothing more mysterious than being aboard the same ship, travelling across the same stretch of sea enjoying a drink together. Yet sometimes human beings cross the distance between stranger and friend remarkably quickly. Something in conversation, some shared laughter or openness, creates a connection that refuses to be measured by the number of hours we have known one another. The journey ends, people go their separate ways, and nevertheless something of them travels on with us.
There was also a bitter Scottish winter when my car became trapped in a deep snowdrift. Somewhere along that motorway a man saw my predicament, continued on his way until he could turn around, and made a journey of some ten miles simply to come back and offer his help. I have often thought about that. He could have driven on. Most of the world would never have known that he had passed a stranded motorist in the snow, and no one would have condemned him for continuing his journey. But compassion made another demand upon him. He saw another human being in difficulty and decided that my problem had, for a little while, become his problem too.
And then, only this week, there was Steve, a man doing some work in my house. He went beyond what the job required, but what stays with me most is not simply the work he did. It was the human connection that grew while we talked. As the hours passed, we exchanged stories about our lives and discovered that both of us had known difficult childhoods. There was something almost unspoken in that recognition, as though two people who had travelled over some of the rougher ground of life could recognise the landscape in one another.
Perhaps suffering can do one of two things to us. It can harden the heart, or it can deepen it. When pain has not been allowed to make us bitter, it can become strangely fertile soil for compassion. Those who remember what it was to be frightened may become the ones who reassure others. Those who remember loneliness may notice the person standing alone. Those who once needed kindness may become unusually generous in giving it. We cannot always choose the wounds life gives us, but by the grace of God those wounds need not have the final word. Sometimes the very places where life once hurt us become the places from which tenderness grows.
Looking back, I wonder whether these apparently accidental meetings are quite as insignificant as they first appear. A man with a half-crown, two young teachers on a ship crossing the North Sea, a stranger turning back through a Scottish winter, and a workman named Steve sharing stories in my home: none arrived with trumpets or announcements. They simply entered my life, left something good behind, and moved on.
That is one of the quiet wonders of being human. We rarely know which of our actions another person will remember. A kindness that costs us five minutes may be remembered for fifty years. A few words spoken casually may give someone courage at precisely the moment they need it. We may forget the kindness we gave while the person who received it carries it for the rest of their life. There is something wonderfully humbling about that.
And for those of us who believe that God is gathering human history towards a purpose greater than the brief span of our earthly lives, there is another beautiful possibility. Perhaps some of life's unfinished conversations are not finished at all. The people whose goodness touched us and then disappeared beyond the horizon of our lives are not lost forever to us.
The apostle Peter speaks of this magnificent hope: “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.” — 2 Peter 3:13.
I love to imagine what that promise might mean when translated from theology into human experience. A world in which righteousness dwells would surely be a world in which goodness is no longer interrupted by sorrow, separation or death. No doubt there, in God's great tomorrow, paths that crossed briefly here will cross again. We will recognise persons we thought we had seen for the last time and discover that no act of love was ever truly lost.
Until then, their stories remind me of something I do not want to forget: we are all passing through one another's lives. We cannot know how long we will remain there, but while we are there, we can leave kindness behind.
And sometimes, that is enough to be remembered for a lifetime.
