By Robert Wilkerson
I saw a Good Samaritan, but I didn’t recognize it at first. She was sitting in a hospital waiting room where people wait to hear from tests their loved ones are undergoing. I remembered her daughter and mine had been cheerleaders for a local youth football team.
When I struck up a conversation with her, I asked if her husband or one of her children was being tested. She explained it wasn’t a family member. She was with a young man who rented from her. Displaced by Hurricane Katrina, he had moved into the state to establish a new place to live and work. He had no family or friends to help him as he faced some serious testing. That’s why she decided to go with him for the tests.
I thought about what she had done
. She had risen early in the morning and driven him several miles to the hospital. She had helped him through the admitting process, helped him with his belongings when he dressed for the test, sat by his side as they prepared him and gave him a mild sedative. Then she sat waiting for them to come for him. After all that, she sat in a crowded waiting room for hours, waiting for the test results; then, helped him dress and check out before driving him home.
It dawned on me, if there ever was a Good Samaritan, she was one. She was hard to see or recognize, but she was a Good Samaritan in the truest sense of the words.
Prayer: Thank you, God, for every Good Samaritan. Help us to be one.
Luke 10: 37 says, “Jesus told him, go and do likewise.”
Thought for the day: Be the change you want to see in the world.
Dr. Robert Wilkerson is a minister, writer and founder of People For the Christian Way, an organization whose mission is to encourage all people to practice Christian principles in business, politics, and every area of life.