STEP-IN
NEIGHBOR

Topics: Mercy; Neighbors; Sacrifice

Reference: Luke 10:25–37

My wife, Gail, and I were flying to Boston. We were seated near the back of the airliner in the two aisle seats across from each other. As the plane loaded up, a woman with two small children took the row of seats in front of us. Another woman took a seat across the aisle next to one of the kids, and the mom held the other child on her lap. I hoped the kids wouldn’t be noisy.

My prayer wasn’t answered. The two children had a tough time. The air was turbulent, the children cried a lot—their ears hurt—and it was a miserable flight. The two women kept trying to help and comfort these children. The woman at the window played with the child in the middle seat, trying to make her feel good and paying her a lot of attention.

Things went downhill from there. As we got toward the last part of the flight, the child in the middle seat got sick. The next thing I knew she was losing everything from every part of her body. The diaper wasn’t on tight, and before long a stench began to rise through the cabin. It was unbearable.

I watched as the woman next to the window patiently comforted the child and tried her best to clean up the mess and make something good out of a bad situation. The plane landed, and when we pulled up to the gate, all of us were ready to exit that plane as fast as we could. The flight attendant came up with paper towels and handed them to the woman in the window seat and said, “Here, ma’am, these are for your little girl.”

The woman said, “This isn’t my little girl.”

“Aren’t you traveling together?”

“No, I’ve never met this woman and these children before in my life.”

Suddenly I realized this woman had found the opportunity to give mercy. She was, in the words of Christ, the person who was “a neighbor.”

—Gordon MacDonald, in the sermon “Pointing to Jesus: Generosity,” Grace Chapel, Lexington, Massachusetts (February 22, 1998)