When a disaster happens so far away, it can be easy to be concerned. It crosses our path, briefly. Too briefly.
The priest walks by.
We can find ourselves thinking that there is no point helping; there are others better suited. Anyway, who knows what will happen to the money really.
The Levite walked by.
Sometimes we need a little prompting. Sometimes when the media tells us that the foreign land is a breeding ground for terror, that ‘they’ all want to come ‘here’ and take our jobs or blow us up, they with their foreign gods and different cultures we don’t understand, we can easily walk by. The reasons feel sound. We can understand. It’s someone else’s problem. We have our own issues. Maybe they deserve it anyway.
In Jesus’ story the man of a different religion and culture rescued his fellow human; put himself out to help him; entrusted the inn-keeper with money to help where he could not. No-one deserves to be left to die.
The Samaritan stopped to help. Why?
Currently the floods in Pakistan cover an area the size of England. So far 1,500 have been killed with 6 million in need of emergency aid. 6 million. It is impossible to visualize – that is almost the population of London or Sweden. Think about the devastation our own floods caused in Tewkesbury, in Boscastle, in Cumbria. Think how long it took our Army to re-build one bridge in Workington. Translate the River Derwent to a river the size of the Indus and you’ve got yourself a major problem. For more information on the size of the problem see here.
If you can help and haven’t already, please donate to the DEC. Not because you want to inherit eternal life and think it’s a good thing to do to earn god-points, but because you love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, because you love your neighbour as you love yourself; or simply because you can. If you cannot, because you have already, because you are in debt, or for any other reason, then please ignore this.
To see how the DEC helped in Haiti, see here, because even the Samaritan went back to check how the man was getting on:
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the blog of kevin 
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