Go and do likewise

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10: 36-37)

And this is the conclusion of the story of the good Samaritan…a parable on how to be a good neighbor.

Background

Just this past week my work took me to Bangladesh, a country in desperate need of Christ-like neighbors. A little about Bangladesh from the CIA World Factbook:

• The country has over 157M people in a size close to that of the state of Iowa, making it one of the world’s densest countries
• The population is estimated to be 89% Muslim and nearly 10% Hindu
• Dhaka, the largest city, has over 14M people

The GlobalPost in a Sept 28^th, 2017 article reported that, “There are more than 800,000 Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh. About 480,000 have fled Rakhine since Aug. 25, when Myanmar’s army began an operation against the Muslim minority group in retaliation for an attack by an armed Rohingya faction called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.  The operation has emptied dozens of villages and forced people to flee the violence across Myanmar’s borders.”

Sixty percent of these new refugees are children below the age of 18, according to UNICEF. And many of them …are making the journey alone as orphans.

Here is an excerpt about a young person whose name is Mohammad, written in the same GlobalPost article:

Mohammad Sohail is unusually quiet. Mohammad does not remember the date he left home or the name of the village in Rakhine he is from. All he remembers is that one morning, soldiers from Myanmar’s military stormed into his village while he was brushing his teeth.

“They shot mummy, daddy, my grandmother, and my friend, Shamshu, and his grandmother,” he said quietly, before turning away with tears in his eyes.

Mohammad ran as fast as he could. He does not remember for how long he was running before he fell into a river. “There was a very big leaf in the river, and I caught it, held onto it and floated for a little while,” he recalled.

Mohammad is 7 years old. He has been making this journey alone.  I try to make sense of it.  I just can’t…7 years old.

Reflections

Before this trip I thought very little about Bangladesh. I had no idea there was a Myanmar refugee crisis.  I had no idea that tens of thousands of orphans were trying to escape.  I had no idea that over 14M lived in really tough conditions in Dhaka Bangladesh.  Sheez, I didn’t even know there was a city called Dhaka.

I live in my bubble. I have spent massive amounts of time following my sports teams; tracking college football recruiting; planning vacations; scheduling entertainment and consuming media.  And while none of these activities perhaps by themselves are wrong, my heart’s focus was not even close to being aligned with His.

Before the good Samaritan intervened in the parable above, there were many people who walked right on by. I suspect there have been way too many times in my life where I just walked by…in many cases not because I was outright rejecting the need but because I just didn’t see it.  I was thinking about tomorrow.  I was thinking about my team or my hobby…or in many cases my “big” problem.  I wasn’t present.

Lord, forgive me for being lukewarm. Change my heart.  Help me to see and feel what You do.  Help me to “go and do likewise”.

What if we ask and allow the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and to give us His eyes? What will we see?

What if the Christian church on a whole demonstrated in crisis after crisis a reckless love that looked so different than what the world offers? That looked Christ-like?