This has been a crazy time, hasn’t it! We’ve all seen weird times – roller coaster gas prices, the Y2K scare, 88 reasons Jesus is coming back in 1988 – but I think this one takes the cake. The good news is that there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel! It looks like things are going to slowly start re-opening and get back to normal. The question is, do we want it to go back to “normal?”
The past few years have seen people get more and more self-absorbed. Who would have thought that we needed cameras that would take a picture of ourselves! I have seen students sit and take a series of 6 to 10 pictures in a row – of themselves! I might do that to pick out the best one, but they seem to want them all. Now, we have just spent the last month or more by ourselves, in our homes, mainly taking care of just ourselves. (My appreciation for all the essential workers who kept on and for the ones caring for family and friends!) Like me, there seem to be a lot of people ready to get back together but let’s find a new normal.
When we come out of our houses, let’s come out of our self-focused life as well. Jesus taught, “Love your neighbor.” A lawyer wanted to know exactly what that meant for him. We don’t know why he spoke up. Was he was being selfish or overly cautious or truly wanted to understand better? We don’t know but Jesus responded with His Good Samaritan parable about giving and caring for others. Any one of those three men could have helped the beaten man but it was the stranger, the social outcast, the despised Samaritan that did. A recent devotional included this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. “The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’… the good Samaritan reversed the question; ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” The good Samaritan was outward focused just as we should and need to be. I pray this for myself and our church.
Until our next (hopefully real – live, face to face) togethering,
love ya,
Bret!!
