I was fascinated to find some stories on the BBC website today of people sharing a time when a stranger had helped them…

Here are two accounts:

“One cold Sunday morning in 1965, when I was a theological student in Leeds and preaching 30 miles north of my college, my fiancée and I were travelling on my Honda 90. We were inadequately attired for a particularly cold morning. Somewhere up the A1 the bike ran out of petrol.
We stood at the side of road shaking with cold and not sure what to do. Suddenly a passing car stopped just past us. The driver got out, popped his boot, took out a gallon can of petrol and poured it in my tank without saying a single word. He put the tank back in his boot and drove off.
We stood there open-mouthed and stunned with gratitude.
To this day we’re tempted to think it was an angel.”

John Tindall, Birmingham

“In 1993, at a football game between Millwall and Portsmouth, I was drunk as usual.
A policewoman was ushering us Portsmouth fans back towards the station when she saw me staggering and went to arrest me for being drunk. Seeing that I was not disorderly, she asked if I was OK. I said: “Yes, fine, just having a good time.” She said it didn’t look like much fun and asked whether I drank often. I replied: “Every day” and cried.
She held my arm gently and told me to stop drinking. Life was too good to drink every day, she told me. She said I looked too good to be a drunk and was too good a man to die young. The policewoman looked at me with pity and a kindness that made me cry again and think.

Two months or so later I got sober. I haven’t had a drink in 17 years.”

Ian Geddes, Southampton

These two accounts really moved me… as well as the other 8 that appear on the site. Our kindness – even small sentences of encouragement that may not mean that much to us – can change someone else’s whole perspective and sometimes, even their lives.

Make someone else’s day today. Do something unexpected.