The mid-Atlantic area has been blanketed with almost 40″ of snow and as you can imagine, we’re not used to never mind one blizzard, but two blizzards within the space of 72 hours. With the force of a category 1 hurricane, most people were forced to remain in doors especially after Baltimore’s Mayor declared a phase three emergency banning cars from the road. Trying to stay ahead of the snow piling up was impossible with gale force winds. So, today most people could be found shoveling, sweeping and using whatever they could to dig-out from under the snow.
Having lived up north with freezing, snowy winters, getting out and shoveling didn’t phase me, but heavy wet snow is fairly strenuous work. With about a foot to go to break through to the street after already shoveling a 30 foot path piling snow to each side mounding up to 3.5 feet my energy was beginning to wane. One man passed by saying, “Here’s a woman libber,” – as if a woman couldn’t shovel snow! Then three more guys came along with shovels and one of them said, “Let me give you a hand, after all that’s what neighbors are for, we live down the block.” And the three of them shoveled the last foot to the street breaking through about four feet of hard, compressed snow shoved to the side by a heavy duty plow truck. And God is good! Neighbors helping neighbors … isn’t this what we are called to do as Christians – to see a need and lend a hand? In the inner city where I live, this isn’t always as evident, but these three men surely demonstrated this to be the case.
In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 10:25-27) about the Good Samaritan, Jesus, after telling the Good Samaritan story, asks the law scholar who challenges him about who will get into heaven, “… in your opinion, who was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
These three men were definitely Good Samaritans today!
Tags: Baltimore, christian service, Gospel reading, Maryland, mid-atlantic blizzard, scripture, snow
