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My mom had an older sister named Anne who suffered from a rare blood disease. This disease affected her heart and she needed to travel from Fayetteville to Houston in order to have open-heart surgery. This was in the 1950’s and even then surgery was very expensive. My grandpa Norwood worked for the M.K.T. Railroad and didn’t make much money so he went down to the local bank to get a loan for the time they would have to spend in Houston. The local banker gave him checks to use and with a handshake told him not to worry about the loan at that time but just to take care of Anne. So my grandparents took Anne by train to Houston while my mom who was about 12 and her little brother stayed in Fayetteville at the house by themselves! Well that little community took care of my mom and her brother by bringing them meals and checking on them. Anne’s surgery went well and they came back after about three weeks or so. Not long after that my grandfather went to the bank to arrange a pay back for the loan he had taken out for the doctors and other expenses he had accumulated while in Houston. The banker just shook his head and told my grandfather it had been taken care of! That town had come together and taken up a collection to pay for all the expenses. Every time I recall that story I tear up because it reminds me that there was a time when folks treated each other like neighbors. Even though I never knew my Aunt Anne or the folks of Fayetteville, I can appreciate what they did.
Jesus tells the story of a man who had no reason to help a busted up traveler other than he understood him to be his neighbor. In our day of gated neighborhoods and isolated lives it can be hard to imagine such an act of compassion and generosity to a stranger. The point of the story is that there was a human being in need who was in the proximity of another human being that had the ability to help. Jesus was instructing a lawyer who was looking for a way to get out of his responsibility. He was looking for an escape clause, a narrow interpretation of a law that he apparently knew very well. I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t more like this lawyer than we would like to admit. We know what the Bible teaches; we simply find convenient ways to get out of doing what we know we ought to do. If an insurance company understands the responsibility of being “like a good neighbor”, surely the people of God ought to! It would have been so easy for the good folks of Fayetteville to find any number of reasons not to get involved in my family’s struggles. But I am sure glad they found one reason to get involved; they were neighbors. In Christ, John
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