When I was at university the word ‘unhelpful’ was an almost comedic euphemism employed amongst my circle of Christian friends for anything that could cause someone else to stumble. It encompassed a wide spectrum of misdemeanours from wearing a low-cut top (outrageous, I know) to flirting unnecessarily openly with a non-Christian rugby player on the stairs before lunch. I can remember its unfortunate usage being applied to ‘yours truly’ a number of times. I hated it.

But I have thought about it a lot since and how my behaviour and words can be helpful or otherwise towards others. A careless word, a thoughtless action can have huge impact.
I sat with a friend a while back who was nearly in tears as she recalled how a passing comment from a barmaid had wounded her some 10 years ago. 10 years!! Painful comments dig deep into our souls can’t they?

That’s why, today, we can choose to allow God to let us be helpful to those around us. We can deliberately decide to live a life that puts others first. We won’t always get it right, of course, but we need to be aware of how we come across. A close friend of ours was speaking to my husband one day on the phone. He was recounting how, early the previous morning, he had had a delivery of some replacement Denby china.

The delivery man was not at his most pungent at 8am. Our friend could see him standing there obviously thinking, “must say two things – ‘Goodbye’ and ‘This package is fragile'”. Presumably he had been sleepily rehearsing these phrases somewhere inside his morning brain. He handed over the parcel, went to walk away and then shouted ‘Fragile!’ in a ‘goodbye’ kind of tone and then kicking himself for his error, scarpered as quickly as he could, covered in the mists of early morning confusion. I roared with laughter when my husband told me this. Poor bloke. All day he would remember that and think to himself “I only had two things to say and I fluffed it.”

How many times are we in the same position? How often do we come away from a meeting where we have a bad taste in our mouths for something we should have left unsaid? Let today not be a day like that. Remember that, just like the china that was delivered, people are fragile.