“Always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:15
On our recent trip to Stockholm to visit family Tee and I set out one day to explore a particular section of the city. As we emerged from the subway station and began walking down the street Tee casually suggested to me that we should identify a landmark to keep us oriented so we could find our way back to the train station. It so happened at that very moment we were walking in front of an outdoor café, and no sooner had she said it than out stepped the proprietor of the cafe. “Excuse me,” he interrupted, “I overheard your conversation, and may I point out to you that church steeple over there, a landmark you can see from almost anywhere. Look for that and you will never be lost.”
As it turned out, that single event set the tone for our entire two weeks visiting Stockholm, as the café proprietor’s kindness and friendliness was in fact not unusual at all but rather quite the norm. Soon we began to believe it to be the friendliest and most courteous city we have ever visited. When boarding public transportation, for instance, whether a bus, train car, or ferry, if it was standing-room-only riders would jump to their feet offering their seats – even to us, strangers in a foreign land. It was amazing!
In what is perhaps Jesus’ best known and most widely quoted parable, he tells the story of a man found lying in the dust on the side of the road beaten half to death and robbed of his belongings. After a priest and a Levite hurried past to tend to their much more urgent business, a third man came along who stopped, tending to the victim, binding his wounds, then loading him on his donkey and delivering him to a place of care and safety, an act so profound that even in today’s news when we read about some kind soul stopping to render aid we still refer to that person, as from Jesus’ parable, a Good Samaritan.
The kindness, courtesy, and respect we experienced in Stockholm caused me to consider something about the Good Samaritan that I had never thought of. More than just a one-off act of kindness – in contrast to the two who passed by on the other side of the road – it reflects an attitude, which in the broader society translates into a culture of kindness, courtesy and respect for others; for as Frederick Buechner once wrote, “unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily.” As the Apostle Paul says, “Always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.”