The Innkeeper

So recently, (this morning), I couldn't sleep.  Tossed and turned, turned and tossed, until I finally gave up, and turned on the light.

It was 3:50.

Lovely.

Now what?

Because lately I have been feeling rushed, I decided to take this time to just do something I've wanted to for a while...... and so I did.

I reached over to where on my nightstand rested a book.  I opened it at random, and started reading.

And then I read some more.

And some more.

I reread parts, too.  (Because let's face it, my eyes were still a little blurry, and this was good stuff.)

And where I read, it spoke of a man overtaken by thieves.

Most of us know the story.  A man starts on a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho-- but he doesn't make it safely.  He gets robbed, beaten, and left half dead.  Two people pass by...... but it is the third who stops his own journey.  He has compassion for him, and having this, he goes to him. He binds up the wounds, he puts him on his own animal, and takes him to an inn.  He pays the innkeeper a bit of money, and says that whatever is spent beyond that, he will repay the innkeeper.

And then the seemingly ultimate question:  "Which ... was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?"

Well, we all know that answer--  it was the Good Samaritan.  The man who helped the half-dead man and took him to the inn.

And the words that soon follow are these:  "Go, and do thou likewise."


And thus we have full understanding-- right? We go, we help those we meet, and then we go some more, and help some more. And pretty soon all the inns are filled, and we have completed our own journey.

The End.

Maybe.

But what if, like all the other parables, there are layers within layers?  What if as we read-- admittedly before a glimmer of the sun has even cleared the horizon-- and we see ourselves in another part of the story?

What if we see that as we are asked to 'Go, and do thou likewise', we feel the echo of other words:  'Come follow me'...... which leads me to ask:

What if we are also the Innkeeper?  Sometimes the people we are asked to help will be figuratively 'brought to our door'. And the Lord says, "Take care of him...when I come again, I will repay thee."

What of those moments?  The moments when we are asked not only to help, but to continue to help-- beyond what we have been paid upfront to do, and beyond what we thought were our very clear-cut rules of business, and the well-thought-out, must-sign contracts that we have posted on our door.

If we get into the mindset of 'I will go this far, and no more' we lose out. We stay in our comfort zone, never growing.  We become stagnant. We also begin to shrink.  Because when we refuse to grow forward (yes, grow!), we take a mindset of 'self-preservation', and that means we do what is good for the self, and that circle of friends always ends up having room for only one.

But there is another way--  to trust in the Samaritan.  To trust His word.  To go beyond what we had expected, what we anticipated.  To take a chance that being mindful of 'another way of doing' may not leave us with a full bag of coinage, but with something infinitely better--

We have all 'fallen among thieves'.   To help lift, care, and encourage one another may be the greatest thing we'll ever do.   Are we willing?



Luke 10: 25--37