The Story That Changed My Life

I’d gone to church regularly ever since I could remember. There, I had heard many stories about miracles in lions’ dens and fiery furnaces, and tales of great floods. I was taught, however, that the most important was the story of Jesus Christ.

But, the only story I could understand was about the Good Samaritan. The good news about Jesus dying for the sins of the world meant nothing to me; it seemed as foreign as lions’ dens and fiery furnaces. Only the story about what the Good Samaritan did when he saw a man hurt and needing help on the road–that I could understand. I was being told that helping others in need was a good thing.

Though I didn’t realize it, I had settled what Christianity meant to me — it meant helping others.

So I helped. I gave money to “Save the Children” when I was young, tutored those who couldn’t read when I was older, and visited orphanages and convalescent homes with my church youth group in my last years before college.

So what would be next?

Yale seemed to be ideal for a Good Samaritan. There were many good volunteer programs set up to help under-privileged children, and to feed and clothe the homeless. But volunteering in New Haven was very different from volunteering in my hometown. In Los Angeles, I could drive away from my rescue work: there was a buffer zone between me and the suffering. But at Yale, whether going to class or to lunch, every step brought me face-to-face with the hurt and needy man on the road that the Good Samaritan would have helped.

I gave a dollar here and there, sometimes more, but that “hurt and needy man” would never disappear. He seemed to be everywhere I went.

Could I turn my back on even one and still confess to be a Christian? Didn’t helping the tenth and not that eleventh man alter the principle behind the lesson of the Good Samaritan?