from Petes Page for 14 March

Now is always the right time!

She came into the office and planted a startling passionate greeting right on my lips! In clear sight of an ogling bunch of draughting cadets. Before I could stop myself I’d said, “Not here! Not now!” And she replied as quickly, with a mischievous giggle, “Now is always the right time; here is always the right place!” In a perverse kind of way, I felt unnerved and proud at the same time.

Maybe there is a right time and place for PDAs (public displays of affection) but I’m a hopeless romantic, and tend to think that within limits there’s no such thing as the wrong place, wrong time.

And that’s how I feel about taking the opportunity to pass on a little blessing to another fellow occupier of this Planet. I would add that there’s no wrong person to whom you can offer a blessing. What seems an embarrassingly inappropriate time to you may the surprisingly perfect moment for another. Wisdom is required sometimes.

For some it may be something we daren’t delay, because the weight of grief or confusion that they carry should be alleviated immediately, and you may be the only person that will cross their path that day with the equipment to be the blessing they so desperately need.

Gets me thinking of the poor stiff who’d been mugged near the Jerusalem rubbish dump; he lay there in pain, in danger, in desperate need, while one man after another found the time not quite right for helping a victim of brutality. Hope was beginning to die in this poor, helpless, victim – when a member of a despised and mistrusted ethnic group decided there is no such thing as the right time to help another in trouble – just there is no opportune for being beaten to pulp. This despised one not only stopped to rescue but proved himself a friend beyond expectation, a blessing never to be forgotten – remembered forever by succeeding generations.