“What shall I do to
inherit eternal life? What is the written Word? And he answered, “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
strength, and with all your mind, and
your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:25-27).
Hey Gang: How did you
answer the question? I read a story
recently about a group of guys that arrived late at the airport and had to run
to the gate to make their flight home. In their haste one of the guys
accidentally ran into a blind girl, who was selling apples, spilling the apples
all over the airport floor. The group
did not miss a beat in their flight to the gate except for one who also ran by
the girl, but stopped and returned and picked up the apples and set up her cart. When finished the girl asked, are you Jesus?
The ones that were damaged and unsalable he purchased from
the girl, but due to his act of kindness he missed his flight home and spent
most of the rest of the day at the airport waiting for a second flight home. In the last blog I asked which you would have
been, the Priest, Levite or a Good Samaritan, under similar circumstances?
I wonder how the guy, who had knocked the girls cart over,
felt when he had to look at the empty seat in the aircraft all the way home
knowing that someone else, a friend, was paying a sacrificial price to make
amends for his failure to step up to the line. Do you think Jesus might recall that apple
incident, when the one who neglected to repair the damage he caused to a blind
girl selling apples in an airport, stands before the Lord to give an account of
“Truly I say to
you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the
least of them, you did (did not) do it to Me” (Matt. 25:40).
In the last Morning Message we set the stage for what is to
come in Jesus’ story. As I mentioned
also, on one of our trips we had devotions at similar place to that where this
story was built around. Between
Jerusalem and Jericho was a stretch of road that was like walking down a dark
street in the ghettos of one of our large cities – you did it at your own
peril. It not only was a road that
dropped 2300 feet in elevation, but was also known for some “very bad dudes”.
The road with its many sharp curves and huge rocks was a perfect place to
surprise travelers.
Every Jew was well aware of the hazards of the Jericho road
so when Jesus said that His story took place at this dangerous place, their
ears perked up for they were sure that what would follow would be a story of
intrigue mixed with gore.
Note: Jesus does not identify who the victim is. We assume it is a Jew, probably who lived in
Jerusalem. It matters not who he was or
where he lived. The important issue, he
was a man who had been robbed, beaten and left for dead! It did not matter who the girl in the airport
was, she was blind and depended on the selling of a few apples to provide her
needed money for survival.
There was a common denominator among the three main
characters in the story, they did not know the victim. First the Priest, a religious man, passed him
by and then a Levite also passed him by.
The third, a hated Samaritan arrived on the scene. Remember the response of the three travelers:
all three “saw” the one who had been robbed, beaten and abandoned, but the Samaritan,
alone, felt compassion.
Compassion, a word we must look to Webster to see what it
means, because as we evict God from our country we also evict compassion with Him. I do not believe the one who was left to
die said to the hated Samaritan, “Hey man, don’t touch me, I don’t want the
dust from your sandals on my coat.”
The message has not changed.
It remains the same: “Get involved, reach out, risk”. Another New Testament writer sees compassion
as that which makes Christianity authentic;
kind-of-like a one-sided coin, faith without works is counterfeit.
I have had a book titled Compassion by Chuck Swindoll
in my archives. For many years it never made it to the top of my reading list,
until a week or so ago. It is my type of
book- few pages and large print. He
tells the story of a lady who was the mother of two retarded children, both
raised, but still living at home. She wrote the following paraphrase of The
Good Samaritan story:”
“and He said, “I was
afflicted with cerebral palsy and you listened to my faltering speech and
gently held my flailing hands; I was born a Down’s Syndrome child and you
welcomed me into your church. I was
retarded and your love reached out to me.”
And the people said, “Lord, when did we see you with cerebral palsy and
listen to you, and when were you born with Down’s syndrome or retarded?” He said, “In that you did it to the least of these my people, you did it to me.”
An anonymous poet wrote the following: “Love has a hem to her garment that trails in the very dust, it can
reach the stains of the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must.” Place this on the bathroom mirror and
refrigerator, “…to the least of these my
brethren so you have done it unto Me”.
Blessings,
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