Sleeping Through the Sirens (Friday Devotional)

Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.”

- Luke 10:30-33

This past Sunday started and ended as a lovely, sunny day. But as everybody in North Texas knows, the afternoon was another story. For about half an hour, all you could see was a torrent of wind and water, as 70 mph gusts blew pouring rain in every direction. Trees bent sideways to their breaking points, debris flipped down the street like tumbleweed, and every car on the road either pulled over or slowed to a stop in the middle of the road.

And I slept through pretty much the whole thing.

After a morning that had started at 4:30 and included preaching in two worship services, I came home wiped out, ready to take a good nap before returning to church for the evening. But when Lindsey and I laid down to rest, we heard the rain pounding on the ground outside, so we went to see what was going on. After staring at the storm for a few seconds, dumbstruck by its violence, I nevertheless shrugged and went back to bed. Just as the tornado sirens began to blare outside, I drifted off to blissful sleep.

Sometimes it’s tempting to go through life like I did that afternoon, ignoring the storms we think are beyond our control. The attitude is that if a crisis isn’t my problem or my family’s problem, then it’s none of my concern.

But in Jesus’s famous parable of the Good Samaritan, we are given a biblical correction to that mindset. In the story, an innocent man is beset by robbers, beaten, and left for dead, only for two different men, both religious leaders, to then come across the man and choose not to help him. Whether because they feared for their own safety, because they were worried about becoming ritually unclean, or because they simply couldn’t be bothered, neither man was willing to make somebody else’s problem his own.

Only when a Samaritan—the least likely person to be the hero of a Jewish story—came upon the scene did help finally arrive. The Samaritan, far from disregarding the crisis before him, was moved with compassion and took extraordinary steps to help this stranger, going so far as to treat his wounds, take him to a nearby inn, and pay for the duration of his stay there.

Jesus makes clear from the story and the command which follows it—“go and do likewise”—that your neighbor’s problem is your problem, that mercy is not something reserved only for your inner circle. The call upon every follower of Christ is to practice grace as he did—generously, ungrudgingly, and without partiality. When storms are raging outside, believers can’t just sleep through the sirens.

The world is frequently a frightening, complicated, and dangerous place, and we don’t have the time or the resources to solve every problem—but that doesn’t give us license to shut our eyes, plug our ears, or throw up our hands in despair. Instead, look to the Good Samaritan’s example, refusing to walk away when God puts you in a position to help. Only one man could be the Savior—but you can be a neighbor.