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Dave Tomlinson, writer and Vicar of St Luke’s Holloway in London:

Last week, I was in the supermarket with the missus. Supermarkets are not my favourite thing – especially standing in a queue at the checkout. But it was one of those particularly annoying times when something was going on at the till and everything just ground to a halt.

Apparently, the customer didn’t have enough money – she was a couple of quid short and was faffing about trying to decide what to put back. Everyone in the queue was huffing and puffing – including me! Yet it was clear the woman was distressed and embarrassed. Then a lovely lady in a hijab stepped forward, spoke kindly to the woman, opened her purse and gave her £10 – clearly a lot more than was required.

It was an epiphanous moment…like a light suddenly went on. I was reminded what religion – what being human – is really about. I could have done the same thing; I could have helped… if I hadn’t been so blinkin’ grumpy.

I love walking around on New Year’s Eve; when even strangers smile and say ‘Happy New Year.’ And yet it’s scary how quickly all that disappears in the grey days of January, when spring seems a long way off and you’re standing in a supermarket queue.

I’m not really into new year’s resolutions, they never seem to work, but I do find January is a good time to think about what really matters to me – who I want to be, how I want to live in the world. It is an opportunity to reboot the spiritual system.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard told a parable about two robbers who broke into a jewellery shop. They didn’t actually steal anything. They just went around switching the price tags, so that expensive items became really cheap, and pricey ones were in the sale. Amazingly, when the shop opened, nobody was any the wiser; the customers kept on buying the goods without realising.

I think life has a way of juggling our price tags so we lose sight of what really matters. Which is why it’s good to stop sometimes to sort them out again…