A good samaritan

One of my most favorite peeps in the village sent a link to this video last week. I love my peeps.

Wow! How many times have I walked past the blind man? Too busy. Too uncomfortable. Or maybe too comfortable. The miracle of this scene may not be the words the woman changed on the sign, it may be that she did anything at all.

The video reminds me of the parable of The Good Samaritan:

A long time ago, there was a man traveling to a town called Jericho when all of a sudden he was attacked by robbers. The thieves stripped him, beat him, stole everything he had and left him for dead on the side of the road. Soon after, a priest who was traveling the same road happened upon the scene.  He saw the man in his agony, but kept on walking. Later, a Levite came to the same place. He, too, passed by on the other side of the road. Then came a Samaritan, who when he saw the poor, beaten man, took pity on him. He bandaged his wounds, put the man on his own donkey, took him to an innkeeper and paid for his care.

In Jesus’ time, it would have been unheard of for a Samaritan to offer aid to the ailing Jew. Or for a Jew to accept it. Samaritans were foreigners, Israelites hailing from the north. There was no love lost between the Jews and the Samaritans whose cultural, political and theological differences broke over one thousand years before Christ during the priesthood of Eli. To say the Samaritan’s act of service was a big deal is an understatement. The absolute least likely of these three travelers comes to the ailing man’s aid.

I don’t know about you, but I fell for the shock value of the woman in the video stopping to aid the blind man. She’s beautiful. Seemingly important and clearly has somewhere to go. And yet she stops. She stops and with a few carefully chosen words helps the blind man more than if she had emptied her own bag of coins.

The Good Samaritan parable illustrates for us what it means to live out the command love your neighbor as yourself. The Samaritan loved the Jew. The woman loved the blind man.

Go and do likewise. His words, friends, not mine.

Love,