An Instructive Moment About Love

I was reading the scriptural reference for this chapter and thinking, "Why would a priest walk by a dying man?" Then, I stopped and read Gire's best guess on the matter and tried my best not to be really angry about it. I certainly don't expect "holy men" or pastors to be perfect and I don't expect them to be Supermen but I DO expect them to show compassion at every turn, in every way. That this priest would walk by a dying man because of the inconvenience of the ritual that he'd have to perform in order to purify himself made me want to scream. Taken metaphorically for all the people that never stop to help someone because it is "too much trouble" and I REALLY get mad. Nothing burns me more!

Then comes the Levite who's worried that his own personal success might be put in jeopardy by the dying man so he reasons away stopping and hurries on by. This happens all the time - and might I add here - this is where I see myself falling as far as the ramifications of this story. I can be the world's most impatient person sometimes and I HATE that about myself more than almost anything else. I'm a firm believer that the world should move at my pace (okay, at least the highway!) and under my rules and I struggle with this daily.

But then here comes the Samaritan - if we told this story in the '60's, this man would have been a black man. If we retold the story today, he'd be a muslim or a man from the middle east. There's always someone out there who, because of their differences, we can always find a reason to hate, isn't there? (I love that Jesus picked the one and only person that this man could not accept to say nice things about for this story!)

Today it was the prayer that once again touched my heart. I get so consumed that there is too much pain for me to do any good in the world that I find myself shutting down from doing anything. We all feel look around ourselves and feel like the need for help is too deep and that there is nothing we can do. But, even small things like a smile or looking another person in the eye can do so much to make them feel like they are valued. We can surely stop to help the woman in the wheel chair reach a can up on a shelf or help a mother make sure her three children all get across the street safely. And those are all wonderful things to do - in the smaller sense of things.

But some times I think we all put off really getting in the game far too long in our lives - I know I have. Stepping up and going out of our way to help someone that we expect to get no reward from is a wonderfully life changing thing to do and, yet, we do it so rarely. I wonder what we're all so afraid of? I wonder why we hold ourselves back so much? I wonder if presented with a dying man on the side of the road if I would do all the things that this man did?