if you’re serious about becoming a kinder person, step one is start seeing the needs of the people around you. step two is to sympathize with them emotionally, with their pain. and then three, seize the moment.
seize the moment to be kind. don’t wait. don’t delay. don’t procrastinate. do what you can at that very moment. this is the third thing that the good samaritan did.
luke 10.34a (nlt), kneeling beside him the samaritan soothed his wounds with medicine and bandaged them. he took action.
love is something you do. he didn’t just say, “i’m sorry for this guy. isn’t it a shame? isn’t that too bad?” he actually did something.
notice, he stooped down. in other words, he got on the man’s level. he didn’t pretend he was superior, and he didn’t talk down to him. he gets eye-to-eye contact. important for kindness. he gets down on his level.
second, he uses what he had. other translations say he dressed the man’s wounds with wine and oil. why? that’s what he had on his donkey. the wine worked ok because it’s alcohol. it’s an antiseptic. the oil worked ok because it would be soothing to the wounds that he had.
then it says he dressed him with bandages. where did he get the bandages? obviously this guy’s not a doctor. he doesn’t have a first-aid kit. and the man has been stripped naked so he didn’t have any clothes. the bandages are the samaritan’s own clothes. he takes his shirt off, rips it up and starts bandaging this poor unfortunate victim.
the point is: he did what he could with what he had at that particular point. he didn’t call a professional. he didn’t dial 911 on his cell phone. he says, “i'll take care of this guy’s needs. i'll move into action right now.” and he did what he could with what he had at that particular moment.
just a thought from the front porch….
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