During some of my college years, I had a part-time job driving a school bus for elementary and middle school students. Since I myself hadn’t been a kid for a while, that job served to remind me just how cruel kids can be to each other. One episode in particular stands out from those days.

It happened during the winter months when my early-morning pickups took place before sunrise. I had a route that encompassed a long, winding road called “Bandana” that featured more ups, down, twists, and turns than a roller coaster. In addition to being the curviest route than any of our buses ran, the route was also the longest one. I had to be at my first stop around 6:30 a.m., and the way the route was designed the kids I picked up first in the morning were also the kids I dropped off last in the evening. I always felt for those children. They had to ride the bus twice as long as most kids.

It was a bitterly cold morning and I had six or seven kids on the bus as I made my way along the route. The heater was doing all it could do to get the bus warm, but the kids still had to keep wearing their coats, gloves, and toboggans to prevent hypothermia. Anyone who has ever been on a cold bus on a winter morning knows the scene I’m describing. Of course, it’s not like I could even see the kids in the darkness of the bus. I just knew they were back there freezing in their seats somewhere.

The sideroad I had to drive down to pick up a certain girl was called “Lundy,” and that girl was my one stop down that road. In other words, she was the only reason why the bus had to put in the extra time to run that sideroad. That in itself was enough to put her in bad standing with the rest of the kids.

I got to the stop that morning and everything was business as usual. Like all the other kids, the girl was wearing enough layers of clothing to pass for a deep-sea diver. All I could see of her was a portion of her face. Through all the layers, she was carrying an armload full of books the way little girls carry their books, using two hands and holding the books close to her chest. I watched as she walked up the steps of the bus and started making her way back through the dark aisle toward her seat. Once she got past me, I lost sight of her, but I sure heard what happened next.

Sometime shortly after she passed me, she tripped and fell. From the sound of it, she fell for days. The sound of her falling was accompanied by the awful sound of all her books hitting the aisle floor. Even though I couldn’t actually see her, I got a clear mental picture of her lying there in a heap, probably bruised and scraped from the fall, clothes dirty from the bus floor, and books and papers scattered all over the place. Bless her heart, it was an awful experience for her. What I didn’t know was that it was about to get worse.

Unfortunately for her, she happened to land in the aisle right next to the seat of boy who couldn’t have cared less about her problems. Rather than bend down and help her, or even ask if she was okay, this little fellow just sat there unfazed. Then he proceeded to utter the two most bone-chilling words I have ever heard one human being say to another. Sarcastically, he asked her one simple question: “Walk much?”

Those words were so cold they took whatever heat the bus heater was churning out and turned it into ice crystals that hung in midair inside that bus. I had never felt so bad for anyone in my life as I did that little girl at that moment. So, I stopped the bus and waited as she picked herself up, gathered her belongings, and made her way to her seat. I’m sure that I also threw out some kind of rebuke to the boy for his lack of basic human kindness, but I can’t really recall what I said. Whatever I said didn’t matter much anyway because those two simple words – “Walk much?” – were so devastating that they rendered all conversation that came in their wake mute.

Most people have heard of the golden rule, which is recorded in Matthew 7:12 as a part of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. In that verse, Jesus says:

Do for others what you would like them to do for you. This is a summary of all that is taught in the Law and the prophets. (NLT)

I’ve read that variations of this rule were around long before the time of Christ and could be found in other religions such as Judaism and Hinduism. But what made Christ’s quote different was the fact that He reversed the spin. You see, the previous variations had all couched the rule in the negative. For example, one prominent Jewish rabbi had taught, “What is hateful to yourself do not to someone else.” In Jesus’ command, though, the rule is couched in the positive as the words “do not” are replaced with “do” and the listener is encouraged to do something good for someone as opposed to merely not doing something bad to them.

Getting back to my bus illustration, in Christ’s way of looking at things it wouldn’t have been enough for that boy to merely resist the urge to say what he said. Even more than resisting the temptation to say it, he should have gotten out of his seat, helped that girl up, and assisted her as she collected her books. That would have been Christ’s golden rule in action. Needless to say, that didn’t happen that morning. But I’m not picking on that boy. I myself, at various times in my life, have said or done things that were about as bad. Truth be told, many of us have.

And so, Christian, as the application to this post, let me encourage you to redouble your efforts at living out our Savior’s golden rule. There are people all around you who have in one way or another metaphorically fallen in the bus aisle and are just lying there in need of your help, and you can either sit there and gloat over them, like one of the Greek gods on Mount Olympus looking down upon a peasant, or you can do unto them as you would have them do unto you. The choice is yours, and it’s one you’ll face multiple times each day. Here’s hoping that you choose to put Christ’s golden rule into action each and every time.