The Good Neighbor

My friend Busy and Cheerful Mom (BCM) has 8 children, a dog, 2 cats, and her own business, so she was certainly justified in thinking she didn’t have time. It was 6:30 AM, and BCH had just about finished her run when she noticed the Confused Little Old Lady (CLOL) trying to walk down the hill from the bus stop.

The woman was wearing a house coat, holding a cane in one hand and pulling a little shopping cart in the other. On her shoulders, draped like a shawl, was a black garbage bag. She was struggling to catch her breath.

BCM didn’t have time. At home were children to feed and to get to school, and then she had to get to work too. No one would have blamed her if she had just kept running.

And she considered that too.  She ran on by, but she looked back again, noticed the tottering walk, the confusion, the struggling for air. She turned back.

“Can I help you get somewhere? How you doing?” BCM asked, panting slightly herself.

“Oh, I’m OK. I just have a little trouble breathing without my oxygen,” CLOL smiled sweetly.

“Where you headin’?”

“Well,” CLOL looked into her eyes. “I took the bus down from Layton. I need to first go pay a bill at U-Haul.”

BCH weighed the possibilities. She could just tell her where U-Haul was, about 6 blocks down the hill. She could get home to her kids and carry on with her busy day.

But instead she said, “You wait right here. I’ll be back in a few minutes with my car and take you to U-Haul.”

So my friend drove the CLOL to U-Haul, came back to take her to her next appointment, and then to lunch at Waffle Love.

At this point, my friend asked, “Now where can I take you?” 

“If I can just get a transit map, I can figure out how to get back to Layton.”

BCM looked at CLOL. Layton is just outside Ogden, about 90 minutes’ travel by car. She could imagine all the possibilities for getting lost in the transit system between here and Layton. Then she remembered she was taking her oldest daughter to Ogden that night for a soccer game.

“I can take you to Layton tonight,” BCH suggested, “If you don’t mind hanging out with me until then.”

“Oh I don’t have anything to do today, I would love to come to work and see what you do.”

So that evening, BCM and her van full of kids drove CLOL to her home. When she was dropped off, CLOL told her 92-year-old sister, “This is my new friend, and I am not sure how I would have gotten home without her. I just feel like I have been on a mini vacation.”

When my friend told me this story, it was like, “Oh, this is just a thing that happened.”

“You would have done the same thing,” she said.

No, I wouldn’t have. For one thing I wouldn’t have been out running at 6:30 A.M. For another I would have been scared of approaching a stranger in the early morning dusk. I probably would have been the Pharisee or the Sadducee, crossing over to the other side of the road.

But I’m glad my friend was the Samaritan, that she stopped to bind up wounds and set a neighbor back on her path. I find it interesting that she was able to do this service without disrupting her own day that much. Like the Samaritan, she carried on with her own responsibilities while also helping another. Even the trip to Layton was hardly out of her way.

Thinking about her experience, I want to be more open to possibilities, to see the ways set in my path, in the course of my everyday life, the ways that I can also be a good neighbor.  

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed . . . had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. (Luke 10:33).