The Good Samaritan

I keep thinking about the scripture from yesterday, the parable of the Good Samaritan.

In the Message version of the Bible, Luke Chapter 10, verse 27 goes like this:
He said, "That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself."

The scriptural mandate is to love your neighbor unconditionally. I got a good picture of how to love someone well yesterday. My dear husband, Mark, took his Sunday afternoon to replace the toilet and sink in the office here at Trinity. He got all sweaty and covered with gunk to do an act of service for me and the church.

Of course it is easy to do acts of service for people you are close to. However, the Good Samaritan did an act of service for someone he didn't know and someone his people considered an enemy. I hope we all will be on the lookout for people we don't know that we can do acts of service for. It might be difficult to do or feel weird at first, but the blessings will be many. It can even be simple things. I have been working on reaching out to people who are in service to others like cashiers and wait people. I have been working on calling them by name and being intentionally thankful. For example, I saw a man in the grocery store light up when I smiled at him this morning. He seemed surprised that I smiled and said hello to him. That doesn't compare to what the Good Samaritan did, but hopefully it made that gentleman's day a bit better. It did bless me to see him smile.