One good turn

On New Year’s Eve, I heard about a woman called Judith O’Reilly. Last New Year’s Eve (2011) Judith made one New Year’s resolution. She pledged to do a good deed every day for the whole of 2012. If you have access to the internet you can read more at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/dec/29/good-deed-every-day-volunteering

Or http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/the-mum-who-did-365-good-deeds-1512009

Or you can read the book she has written called “A Year of Doing Good: One Woman, One New Year's Resolution, 365 Good Deeds”

Judith O’Reilly admits that her resolution was greeted with some scepticism by her husband “When I announced my resolution to do a good deed every day for the whole year, my husband groaned – he thinks I complicate our lives.”

And there were times when she thought she might give up. But she persevered.
Among her good deeds were:

Picking up litter on the beach
Making cups of tea for other people’s builders
Rescuing a friend’s son who had got trapped on a fence

To be honest, there is nothing out of the ordinary and I can’t help feel that they are the kinds of things most people would do. And there is a bit of me that thinks many of us could write a similar book. However, I suppose the point is that there are also people who don’t do good deeds or seek to help their neighbours.

I don’t know whether or not Judith O’Reilly is a Christian. She was certainly brought up in a Christian household, and says, in one of the articles, how her parents did lots of good deeds themselves. And this has been an influence.

On reading about her I was reminded of one of John Wesley’s dictums

“Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”

How about we all make that our New Year’s resolution?

May 2013 be a peaceful and blessed year for you and yours.