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There were a
thousand reasons not to stop.
I was
running late for . . . um . . . well, whatever it was that I was
running late for that day. The freeway was busy and I didn’t want to
cause an accident. Surely the Highway Patrol would be along soon, and
it’s their job to help stranded motorists, isn’t it? And I had on my
navy blue suit, with a light blue shirt and a silk tie. Not exactly
car-fixing clothes, you know?
Let’s see – that
makes 1,004 reasons not to stop.
And here’s 1,005:
I am the world’s worst auto mechanic. Public enemy No. 1 on the AAA’s
Ten Most Wanted list. Mr. WhatsaWrench. The first time I tried to
change my car’s oil myself I did fine – until I forgot to put the new
oil in. The boys down at the garage had a big laugh over that one.
The next time, I remembered to put in the new oil – only I put it in
where the power steering fluid goes. That triggered a letter from the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chryslers. They suggested I
get a horse.
Don’t get me
wrong. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. God has given me other
talents to use for the benefit of mankind. But I’m not sure how much
it would have helped that lady who was stranded by the side of the
freeway if I would have pulled over and burped on cue.
So I didn’t pull
over. I drove by, just like dozens of other drivers on the freeway
that day. And I felt guilty about it. So I turned off at the next
exit and made my way back to see if I could at least give her a lift
or something. But by the time I got back to her a Hispanic gentleman
had pulled in behind her and was tinkering with her car’s engine like
he knew what he was doing.
“Is there anything
I can do to help?” I asked.
“No, thank you,”
the lady replied. “This nice man says he can fix it.”
At that moment, a
voice from under the hood shouted: “OK, try it now!”
The woman reached
for the key and turned it. The engine started beautifully.
“It was your
serpentine belt,” the man explained, wiping his hands on his pants.
“It slipped off. It’s pretty worn. You want to take that to a
mechanic, get a new one put on.”
The woman tried to
give the freeway Samaritan some money, but he declined and waved as
she drove off. It wasn’t until we started walking toward our cars
that I noticed he had five more reasons not to stop than I did; his
family was sitting in the station wagon, waiting patiently.
“Do you stop and
help people like this often?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Somebody has to,” he said. “What’s she going to do if nobody helps?”
And for him that
was reason enough.
In his final
sermon, given the night before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. took as his text the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan.
In the story, a man is attacked by thieves and left by the roadside.
Several travelers happen upon him, but they pass by. Eventually
someone does stop to help, although it is the one person who might
have had a reason not to. He is a Samaritan and the victim is a Jew.
Those folks didn’t get along any better back then than they do now.
According to Dr.
King, those who passed by the injured man were asking themselves the
wrong question: “If I help this man, what will happen to me?” The
Good Samaritan stopped to help because he asked the right question:
“If I don’t help this man, what will happen to him?”
Dr. King spent a
lifetime asking the right question. If we truly want to honor his
memory during this time of year and always, then we need to ask
ourselves that question, too. No matter how many reasons we think we
have not to.
(c) 2007 Joseph Walker |
