Yesterday, Johnny Stevens came by the church. As he drove down Highway 88, he noticed a man who was laying in the road there in front of the church halfway on the sidewalk, halfway in the road. Johnny stopped to check on him and learned that he had a prosthetic leg, was quite elderly, and was unable to get himself up. He lay there an hour before anyone came by willing to stop and help. Johnny helped him up…put the man in the car…drove him home several miles away…then came by the church to pack a box of food for him before going to the grocery store to buy him some meat and bread. The man had been on his way to the food bank to get some much needed supplies but his physical and mental condition made the trip impossible.
Sound familiar? Yep, Luke 10:25-37! Jesus tells of the Samaritan man who stopped to help a forsaken traveler after a couple of “churchgoers” passed him by. He bandaged his wounds, put him on his own donkey, carried him into town, and paid for stay in a bed-and-breakfast place while he recovered from his injuries.
(Just for the record, I did not travel on Highway 88 yesterday morning….whew!!!! I’m off the hook!)
When Johnny came by, I thought, “what if I had seen the man?” I decided to quickly pass over that thought process. I HOPE I would have noticed him and helped him. Then, I thought about you all. Were any of you passersby yesterday morning?
Jesus didn’t elevate the Samaritan man. Generally speaking, Samaritans weren’t that good. But this guy put the needs of the helpless man in the road ahead of his own and did what was right, though it was probably inconvenient. Jesus’ story about this man was just a parable, but Johnny got to live it out. Johnny Stevens is a special man, but not because of what he did yesterday. Yesterday, he didn’t do anything special. He just did what any Christian would do, right?!? After all, Jesus’ tells us at the end of that story, “Go and do likewise.”
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