By Maxie Heppell

South African artist Laurika Rauch has been singing about the people on the bus for 20 years now …

Consider the people on the bus
They see love like the morning dew
My heart has been broken for a long time
I just hid it from a few

The people on the bus want to hear
Where did you first lose your heart?
The people on the bus say no
There are many fish in the sea

I am not on Laurika’s bus, but on the red 211 through Chelsea on my way to Victoria Station. And as the faces come and go and change, I wonder what their day will hold?

See, the people on the bus always have opinions about the other people on the bus, made on the fly in the 20 seconds they squeeze past you, or while you discreetly watch them for the next 20 stops.

Watch and listen. Because unless you’re in your own little stereo headphone world, the people on the bus, willingly or unwillingly, become part of those few stops in the lives of the other people on the bus.

She has lived at the same address for 60 years, but these days she doesn’t know any of her neighbours anymore.

Her dialogue partner occasionally drops in on the top floor to visit a 94-year-old who has lived alone for so many years.

No one else does, or so I hear.

We were taught that eavesdropping is wrong. But is eavesdropping always a bad thing?

What if eavesdropping gives you good ammunition for when a friend’s self-doubt threatens to strangle her, and you can loosen the grip on her soul?

What if eavesdropping allowed you to wash someone’s feet, without the left hand knowing what the right hand was doing?

While he was still talking, some people came from the leader’s house and told him,
“Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher anymore?”
Jesus overheard what they were talking about and said to the leader,
“Don’t listen to them; just trust me.”
Mark 5:36 The Message

Jesus overheard.

These men did not speak to Jesus, but He was in their close vicinity and overheard. And His first response was to turn what He had heard into a good gift.

How much of what I hear evokes that first reaction in me?

How much of what I hear sends my creativity into overdrive to make sure someone else is blessed simply because I was there to hear?

Random Acts of Kindness (RAOF) is a movement that has been going for many years.

Where people are good to each other, just because.

Today I wonder if RAOFs should not be fuelled by a new movement of Ongoing (Holy) Eavesdropping?

Where you listen attentively to others’ public conversations – at the table next to you in the restaurant, at the school gate, in line at the post office, in the doctor’s rooms, between the pay points at TESCO.

Not to turn it into juicy gossip.

But to intercede for the sharers in prayer, or physically help out where things are going badly, or to support them without them even knowing where it comes from.

Because wouldn’t you also love it if someone with the best intentions eavesdropped on your own difficult conversations?