Becoming a Good Samaritan

Read: Deuteronomy 23:1-25:19 & Luke 10: 13-37 & Psalm 75:1-10 & Proverbs 12:12-14

We can pat ourselves on the back for donating a dollar or two here and there, but are we really behaving generously? Generosity is intentional, and it’s more than just donating money when someone asks for it. Sometimes generosity means going out of our way to help someone no one else wants to help.

In Luke 10, Jesus instructs us to love God with every fiber of our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we do this, we will have eternal life. Most of us get the loving God part. But, if you are like me, we are severely lacking at loving our neighbors like we love ourselves.

In Jesus’s parable, a man is attacked and robbed. Two religious leaders passed by the man and did nothing. But the Samaritan - who was an enemy of the Jews - cleaned the man’s wounds, put him on his donkey, and took the man to an inn to take care of him. He even paid all of the expenses. Jesus instructs us to, “Go and do likewise.”

Jesus expects us to love other people. Actually, it’s more like He commands us. James 2:8 refers to this as the “royal law. “The people we are called to love aren’t just the people that live next door. We are called to love everyone—even the people that appear broken. What would life look like if we all really loved other people as much as we love ourselves?

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