The One Who Showed Mercy

Luke 10:25-37

Once again, I am reevaluating my patterns of spiritual discipline. It hurts. I want to trust so much in the pattern I had set, but then that pattern loses its Spirit. We have to constantly re-evaluate our spiritual life, and one thing that frequently may need altering is discipline. I have been adding various things to my daily prayer time and it has become tedious and tiring. Starting tomorrow, which happens to be "A Special Time for New Beginnings" in the yearly lectionary, I will cut back my daily reading to ONE scripture in an attempt to internalize it and use it to speak with God through prayer, study, blogging, and copying. Additional readings may be used, but are not necessary. I hope that God will condescend to this new pattern and give life, rather than the system restrict me with its guidelines. This is good. This is not a failure. Its natural. All I need is Jesus...

In other news!... The Good Samaritan... what a story!

Its a great account of Jesus clarifying the Law and calling out through parable someone trying to find loopholes. Some guy tries to get around "Love your neighbor as yourself" by asking "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus responds through a story of a guy traveling who gets beat up, ignored by those who are supposed to be good role models looking out for the people, and finally saved by a despised Samaritan and cared for without any repayment. "Who was the neighbor to the man beaten up?" asks Jesus. "The one who showed mercy," replies the sneaky man. Interesting that the man doesn't say, "The Samaritan." Does he not want to admit that one's enemy could also be one's neighbor and worthy of such care and concern? Nonetheless, Jesus builds on that statement with, "Go and do likewise." Go and show mercy like the Samaritan did. We are called to show mercy to people we don't know, people we despise or who despise us, people we may not be able to repay us, people who may cause us to have setbacks and discomfort (or worse). Yet, how often we fail to stop our plans and address the one in need.

In a sense, we were all once the beaten man. We have all been attacked and left for dead in one way or another. Maybe we are there right now. We need someone to show mercy. We need someone to show us grace and love. God serves as our Good Samaritan so often... He comes across us practically destroyed and puts us back together again and more, often for nothing we have done, but just because its who God is: love. And yet, we despise God, we ignore him, we pretend our very existence is not owed to his unconditional love.

Because God first loved and had mercy on us, we ought to love and show mercy to our neighbors. Who is our neighbor?

...

Stop. Look around. That's your neighbor. Catch yourself throughout your day, your week, your life and ask yourself "Who is my neighbor?" Then stop, look around and remember... "These are my neighbors."