Xanthe Galanis

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.” Luke 10: 3-33

We’ve been talking about servanthood and what it means to be a servant of God. This well-known parable of the Good Samaritan is a wonderful example of someone with the heart of a servant. Why would this Samaritan stop and care for this wounded man, potentially at a great risk to himself? He could have just passed the wounded man by and no one would have known, no one would have thought less of him. I think ultimately there is only one reason; he had a servant's heart. He had a heart of compassion. Jesus said that he took pity on the man that had been beaten. He had compassion for him, and because of that compassion, he was moved to help him.

Last week we spoke about availability as one of the keys to servanthood. This parable reiterates that. The Samaritan didn't plan for this happen.  It wasn’t a part of his scheduled day. He saw a need and he made himself available. He just went about his daily business keeping an eye open for an opportunity to serve. There are simple service opportunities in front of us every day, but most of the time we don’t make ourselves available for them. God doesn’t operate from our daily planner. The appointments in our diaries and Blackberry seldom match up with the appointments he has for us. God can use us if we are willing to make ourselves available to the service appointments that he has for us, and compassionate towards the needs of others.

Prayer: Father, I pray that you might soften my heart so that I might become less callous towards people's needs and less rigid to the hurt and the pain in this world. Amen