The Modern Day Good Samaritan

The Parable of The Good Samaritan

   I would like to paraphrase just a few thoughts and consolidated definitions of what a parable is and is meant to do. First, the parable must be looked at in context with what came before and after it in scripture writings. Chris Dodd defines a parable as something from nature or common life that is strange and meant to tease the mind into thought.  Jesus intends for us to look at things in a different way and let ourselves be transformed.  Often there is humor or exaggeration but not an explicit demand.

     When I read this parable I ask myself, “Am I willing to have my world turned upside down? So many great minds have written commentaries and interpretations on this parable that I cannot do them justice, but will simply offer this story.

  

Sammy 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” …… “And who is my neighbor?”  Luke 10:27,29

                                                     

       The ringing of her telephone startled her eyes to attention well before she usually woke up for the day’s first cup of coffee. The voice on the line belonged to her granddaughter, “Would you please drive us to school?.....We missed the bus and Mom has already left for work.”

      “O.K. Let me pull on some clothes and I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  

    After returning home, Sammy quickly did her house chores so she could have lunch with her mother. She drove to her mother who was in an assisted living facility with a memory care unit. Several times a week, Sammy tried to have lunch or join in the activities with her mother there because it was becoming too confusing to her mother when they would leave the facility.

  

     After signing in, Sammy walked the corridor to her mother’s room and along the way she passed the same faces, John, Agnes, Ruby and others that she greeted each time she visited. But this was a new day so she became a new friend to John, Agnes, Ruby and others today. As usual, when she greeted Ruby, Ruby complimented the necklace that Sammy was wearing.  

      She found her mother getting ready to go to lunch. “I see you’re ready to go to lunch, Mom. I’ll walk down with you when you are ready.”

      “Oh, don’t you think we should wait for your father before we go down?” Sammy’s father had died 18 months ago.

     “We can go ahead and ask the kitchen staff  to keep his meal warm until he returns.” Sammy had learned that this rues was kinder than reminding her mother of a truth that still registered a startled grief in her mother’s frail body. Sammy sat with her Mom at a table with some of the other residents and sometimes was able to engage them in conversation, but most often was not able to converse very much. Her mother enjoyed seeing pictures that Sammy kept on her phone, often ones she had already seen, of the grandchildren and other members of the family. After lunch Sammy might take her mother upstairs for a cup of tea. When Mom became tired they would return to her room where Sammy would settle her in for an afternoon nap and promise to return the next day. As she closed the door, she offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving for the many “holy moments” she could share with her mother.

     On her drive home, Sammy passed a grocery store with a picket line in front. The sun was not quite ready to set but the north wind began to blow a chilling rain across the empty parking lot. Sammy didn’t know details about the strike but was taken in by the smiles that beckoned others to their cause. Her heart only saw the soaked and matted hair and felt the chill on their skin. So she did what she knew best to help---she fed them. Her car turned into McDonald’s where she bought twenty five burgers and cups of coffee. When she pulled into the parking lot with the burgers and coffee, her reward was many warm bear hugs from so many grateful strangers. 

  

    Before her head hit the pillow that night, she gave thanks for the many beautiful people who had entered her life that day.

  

   Sammy’s story is fiction but our lives are not. How do I live my life?

                         

Reflection by Linda Crowley