FIND JESUS - MOVE FORWARD - DO SOMETHING
When reading the Bible, the correct question, is “what did this mean to THEM?” What was Jesus saying in this parable, to this expert in religion? What would it have meant to him THEN? Once we understand that, we can know what it would say to us today.
The samaritan stopped and he LOOKED.
The man was asking, “who is my neighbor?” as in…”who is my responsibility?”, and instead, Jesus tells him how to BE a good neighbor.
He took responsibility.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously said: “On the parable of the Good Samaritan: “I imagine that the first question the priest and Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But by the very nature of his concern, the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
He didn’t expect anything in return.
So who are you in this story?