The Golden Rule

The voice of the assistant on the phone was heavily accented. She seemed nervous and unsure as she requested my details: name, address, credit card details. She left me on hold without warning me first. I became increasingly annoyed, and when she asked me several times to repeat the details of my order, I finally lost patience, told her to cancel my order and hung up (intending to phone back and get someone more competent to take my order). 

Then a thought struck me: ‘Maybe she is a new immigrant, and this is her first day in her first job.’ Perhaps if I had been more patient I could have given her some self-confidence and helped her learn how to do the work without being so nervous.

Then I remembered what Jesus said about what we do to one of the least of his sisters or brothers (see Matthew 25:31–40). I thought: ‘What if this had been Jesus that I’d been talking to and I had behaved like that toward him?’

It was too late to make amends to the assistant, knowing it would be impossible to reach the same person on the phone again. All I could do was to ask God to forgive me for my insensitivity and pray that in the future I would remember to treat others as members of Jesus’ family.