34 [The Good Samaritan] went
to [the battered man] and
bandaged his wounds
… [and] brought him to an inn,
and took care of him.
35 The next day he took out
two denarii, gave them to
the innkeeper, and said,
‘Take care of him; and when
I come back, I will repay you
whatever more you spend.’
Luke 10
A few years ago, my father was moments from having his leg amputated.
He had sudden and severe blood clots in his left leg. His foot was dying. The doctor came in to tell us that he was doing surgery. Reflexively, he took the pulse in my father’s foot one last time. And his expression suddenly changed. He was shocked. The doctor said, “His foot is warmer and the pulse is stronger.”
He came in to tell us that he was going to amputate. He left telling us that he was going to put in stents to open back up the vessels.
We call it a miracle that at the precise moment when the doctor took the pulse in my father’s foot my father’s foot was warmer!
And yet … that’s not the end of the story. It was lots of surgeries for my dad. It was a lengthy recover. My father – nearly eighty at the time – worked hard! (How many times have we said that hard work and diligence is required to be set free from the things that enslave us?)
Well, I was there for part of my father’s journey. While visiting my son in New Haven, Connecticut, my father’s foot went numb. A bad sign! Were the veins and stents collapsing again? Away from his regular doctor, we hurried to the Yale University Medical Center.
Wait … we tried to hurry to Yale’s Medical Center.
I had a brand new smartphone. I said to it, “Direct me to the Yale Medical Center.” And I started driving. We were in a town just west of New Haven, and my smartphone turned me in the wrong direction – further west.
Thankfully, I’m not directionally challenged. So against my phone’s advice, I drove east toward New Haven where the hospital is. When we got close to the city, I said to my phone, “Direct me to the nearest Hospital.” Already driving around Yale’s campus, it tried to direct me further west again, to the “nearest” hospital fifteen miles away.
I refused, and seeing a row of food trucks. I stopped and said, “Can you direct me to …”
They did! It was just a few blocks away!
Our sign for today is the hospital sign. (I could have used a sign like that, while trying to anxiously navigate those tight city streets. We knew where to go to heal … we just couldn’t get there!) The question for you, though, is do you know where to go to heal? Indeed, where is the place – perhaps with the right people – to set you free?
Too often we are stuck in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time. And too often we are doing the wrong things.
The problem is this: When we’re in bondage, we’re often tired. Exhausted. Our bed and our couch have like this gravitational vortex. They suck us in … and keep us stuck.
When we’re exhausted, we’re stuck in maintenance mode. We do just enough to by. We compromise. We do the easy things and go to the easy places rather than work to find the places of healing.
If we hadn’t worked to find Yale’s Hospital, the results could have been disastrous for my dad. If you don’t work to find your places (and people) of healing, the results will be disastrous for you.
In Christ’s Love,
an old fashioned guy
who still uses maps to confirm
the computerized directions
when the trip is important
(for example, a couple is
married today because
I looked at a map
for a country wedding
and turned left instead of
right like my phone said!)
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