THE Good Samaritan

Have you ever heard the story of the Good Samaritan?

If so, you know how it goes:

Luke 10:30-37

a guy gets attacked by robbers, stripped of his clothes, and beat to a pulp as he was traveling on a dangerous road. The robbers leave him for dead on the side.

1^st guy passes by: a priest (church leader). Doesn’t stop to help.

2^nd guy passes by: a Levite (church worker). Doesn’t stop to help.

3^rd guy passes by: a Samaritan…from a hated group of people at the time in that area, and therefore possibly hated by the man on the side of the road. But the Samaritan has pity on the dying man, stops, cleans the man’s wounds with oils, sacrificially using his own resources, gently cares for him, and sets him up to receive further care.

All my life, i’ve thought that story was about trying hard to be the Good Samaritan. I need to be the one to notice the man on the side of the road and help him. I need to serve people. I need to genuinely love people. That’s alot of pressure! Cause honestly, a lot of the time I simply don’t feel like it. Or i’m scared to. Or I don’t think other people deserve it.

Its easy to go to a place like Haiti and have the mindset that i’m crossing off my responsibility to the be the Good Samaritan. I’m helping. I’m serving. I’m taking care of those in need.

All rubbish. I’ve learned something recently…

I am not the Good Samaritan. I could never ever ever be. Wanna know what that story is really about? Its really about us…but not in the way you’d think it is.

My wise friend, Beth (sorry…i know you don’t want credit, but I can’t not mention you!) found this amazing parallel after we studied this story in our bible study. Its rich and amazing.

Check out the way God describes us in Ezekiel 16:4-12

“On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!” I made you grow like a plant of the field. I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put sandals of fine leather on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head.”

hmmm…eerily similar to the way the dying man and the Samaritan are described in the Good Samaritan story, no??

i’m here to say that the Good Samaritan story is not a model for how to go and be a Good Samaritan.

Its a picture of how much we are in need of a Good Samaritan.



see it? See what Jesus is telling us? we are the ones dying on the side of the road. We are the ones in need of a Good Samaritan to come and rescue us. He’s telling us that He’s the Good Samaritan. He’s the Rescuer. He’s come to bind up our wounds, take care of us, provide for our needs, rescue us from death’s doorstep.

So before I tell you about our trip to Haiti, I just want you to know that if you think going to Haiti makes me some kind of good person, a good servant, a good Christian, a good samaritain…you’re wrong! I’m a rotten sinner, who more often than i’d like to admit, feels little love or compassion for my fellow human beings. I am just as desperately in need as my Haitian friends. But because of His love for me, I am compelled. Not because I have a duty to cross off my list, as if I even could. But because He loves me so much that He invites me into the work He is doing, the work of rescuing and redeeming this broken planet. Going to Haiti is more about my heart and what God wants to do in my heart than any work or service I could possibly do for anyone else. He loves me enough to engage my heart by taking me to Haiti, and His love overflows in ways that I could never muster up. And I simply can’t NOT GO! Its selfish, I tell you, because I know that God will meet me in that place in a way that is different than how He would if I stayed home….and I simply want to be apart of what He is doing.

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