Helping without thinking

Little kids do it naturally. Automatically. Some adults I know are great at it. I have better days than others and work at it.
What I am referring to is the giving of oneself. The un-calculated, un-conditioned, un-manipulated act of helping others.
When someone you love pleads...sure, we respond. When a casual friend looks you in the eye and asks...yep, most often we'll honor that one, too.
But what about a stranger? Or what about when we're inconvenienced? Or when there's nothing in it for us? Or when there's difficulty or even danger associated with the helping?
I'm often humbled by chance encounters I have with strangers who go out of their way to help. Sometimes I'm the recipient; sometimes I'm just an observer.
There's a guy I know--well, not really since I've never met him--who will always take the time to email me long answers to my stupid questions about metal fabrication. He's owned a welding shop for many years yet still has no problem, in his off ours after a long day in the shop, sitting down in the evening and patiently explaining to me how to solve whatever problem it is that is stumping me.
My friend, Terry, will come up pretty much any time I ask, and lend a hand, a back and an afternoon heaving on a block and tackle line or driving the road grader to tow my tired old crane.
And then there's yesterday: I was searching for the music score to Psalm 27. I had dug up a recording of a cantor singing what is thought to be the oldest, and perhaps original, Hebrew chant melody to this Psalm. I'd like to sing this in church Sunday as the Psalm is 27, but it's too tough for me to memorize, and too arduous a task to write out and score.
I traced the source of this particular transcription back to a website (very interesting stuff, by the way and here's the address)
http://www.rakkav.com/biblemusic/
Seeing an email address to contact, I thought I'd give it a try and see if there was something he could do to assist me. Within the hour he not only had written back, but had pulled a copy for this Psalm out of his personal collection and attached it to the email.
I'm sure he receives lots of emails and, amongst the email calls to increase our bank account, various parts of our bodies, and proposals to send us money from someone in Nigeria, he spots my email and responds.
Like those great souls who pull over on a busy highway to help someone on the roadside, the great engine of our humanity is these myriad little acts of love.