My two-year old daughter is the only member of my family to be born a British citizen as my wife and I are US citizens by birth.

In a connected event, we noticed that in her toddling when she bumped into pieces of furniture, she would apologise to the table and the sideboard - we love to apologise in this country.

The British have the national knee-jerk towards pedestrian consideration (watch as you run into someone and they apologise to you).

However, we are not immune from the effects of modern life and technology.

Algorithms on our social media feeds and on YouTube encourage us to listen to and associate with voices that sound just like our own.

As well, we find that large percentages of UK adults feel lonely regularly. We’re living in a society where people decreasingly interact deeply with others, and are living in an echo chamber of opinions and views.

I wonder what would happen if we were to do the hard work of doing ‘nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider[ing] others as more important than yourselves.’

The Apostle Paul wrote these words to a community of Christians that were of mixed ethnicities and socioeconomic situations.

Now, just as then, considering others as more important is hard but rewarding work.

I would suggest that if we look at our world and we see a divided and broken place, maybe we could start with ourselves.

How much better would our community look if we all cultivated the act of knowing others, especially those we consider as ‘different’, instead of writing them or this practice off?

Vincent Sacco

Associate Pastor/Youth Worker