My Uni days were a long time ago. One thing I got out of those 4 years apart from a nice looking piece of paper are a few little interesting facts of trivia that I remember from lectures here and there. One of them is the following fact from a Psychology lecture, concerning the perfect conditions in which people might expect help from others.

We were asked if somebody suffers an accident or health crisis and collapses, where do you think the safest place would be? A busy shopping centre or a remote country lane which only gets a few sporadic passers-by? Of course we all thought the obvious answer would be the crowd because there are many people around to offer help. Our lecturer told us that this was put to the test and it's been proven that the likeliest spot to receive aid would be the remote country lane. The reason is that in a crowd, individuals shrink from 'getting involved' and reason that as there are many other people around, somebody else will surely stop to help. In fact, an old friend of mine actually experienced this first hand. She suffered some sort of blood-sugar related collapse in the middle of a metropolitan mall and sat on a bench for several hours in obvious distress until somebody stop and offered assistance.

Whereas in the lonely lane, a single passer-by generally realises that apart from him/herself there is nobody to help. So in 90 per cent of cases he/she will actually stop, phone an ambulance, wait with the sufferering person or do whatever else needs to be done. "So if you feel a funny turn coming on, your safest action would be to get yourself to a place as far from the general crowd as possible," the lecturer concluded. I thought this was an amazing fact about human nature and our natural tendency to stay in our comfort zones and harden ourselves to other people's problems.

Of course, this is nothing new, as the parable of the Good Samaritan shows. People have been the same for over 2000 years. My brother-in-law who now lives in Queensland was not a Christian. Sometimes he ever referred to himself as an atheist. Yet he had a good heart and on several occasions, stopped to lend a hand. Once he pulled over to the side of a busy road to offer an old woman shuffling along in the heat with two bags of groceries a lift back to her retirement village. I couldn't help wondering if I or several Christians I know would have done the same thing. I'd hope so but of course, it's all theoretical unless we're in the same position. Then I wondered how many tired old ladies I'd pass without even registering them or giving them a thought. Kevin was definitely a modern Good Samaritan and a convicting, challenging person to have around.

Once I got my chance. I was walking along our own street and saw a toddler about 2 years old in the back of a car that was parked on the road by himself, red-faced and screaming. Nobody else was around, the car doors were locked and he looked extremely frightened and unhappy. So I knocked on the door of the house and told the lady who answered that he was crying. I was relieved to find that she was very nice, gave me a smile and said, "Thanks, I was just going to pop out to check on him." I was surprised at how "keyed-up" I felt, just because I'd done something. On another occasion, a stranger knocked on our door with a red face and said, "I know it's none of my business but you've left your headlights on." I was surprised that she'd been so uncomfortable and commented to Andrew, "I wonder why people feel so embarrassed to do a good turn." Whatever the reason, I think we have to consciously make up our minds that we'll go the extra mile whenever we can or things will rarely get done.

I'll finish with a little story that was in my nephew's joke book. I don't remember exactly how it went but it was something like this. Every line has a double meaning and I really like it.

There were once 4 housemates and their names were Anybody, Everybody, Somebody and Nobody.

One day there was a job to be done.

It was really Everybody's responsibility but Everybody thought that Somebody was going to do it.

They all knew that Anybody could have done it.

In the end, Nobody guessed that Everybody was going to pike out.

Nobody really wanted to do the job anyway. So the next day, Everybody was surprised to find that Nobody had done the job.