08/12/2015

Good morning. I was walking with my young son in Covent Garden when we were approached by a dishevelled man asking me for money. I didn’t have any cash on me at the time and I said as much expecting the man to try someone else. But he wouldn’t leave. “Please!” he begged “I am so hungry, can’t you just give me something?” I patiently explained again that I would have been happy to, but that I didn’t have cash to hand. He finally shuffled off dejectedly. I walked in the other direction but couldn’t get him out of my head. Was there really nothing I could do for him? I turned and ran after him. “You know what?” I said, “I can get you something to eat with my credit card.” I took him into a hip coffee shop and told him to order whatever he wanted. He chose a slice of cake and a cup of coffee. But when it came to paying the Barista wouldn’t allow it: “let me have a share in this good deed as well,” he said.
I wished the poor man well and left him happily munching cake and sipping coffee.
A Jewish teaching came to mind Mizvah Goreret Mitzvah “One good deed elicits another.” This wisdom is traditionally understood to mean that the more one habituates oneself to do good, the easier it becomes. But another way of understanding this, is that through the good we do we elicit good in others. I inspired the barista, who would he now inspire? And how far would this chain extend?

The Prophet Hosea says: “Sow Righteousness for yourselves; Reap the fruits of goodness”
Almighty God, bless us with the capacity to sow seeds of kindness so that they grow beyond our wildest imagination.