Doing the right thing

Yesterday was a long day.

Even if it's good news, it's never a really good thing when the telephone rings at 3:23 a.m. And in this case, it was good news. Friends of ours called to say that they were on the way to the hospital, because the wife was going into labor.

They wanted to know if my wife and I could take their jr. high-aged daughter to school later in the morning. The problem - they have recently moved to a town near Rockford, an hour away from here. And if the husband was not able to leave the hospital in time, they asked if we could pick her up at school at the end of the day.

I'll be honest. A part of me didn't really want to have to get out of bed at 6:00 a.m. so that I could head toward Rockford to take a jr. higher to school. A bigger part of me didn't want to go back again three hours after I got home.

Still, there was no hesitation. Why? Because Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor. When somebody asked Jesus who his neighbor was, Jesus replied by telling the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Among the things that we can see in that story is that loving our neighbor sometimes requires sacrifice. Sometimes it requires us to do things we would rather not do.

God wants us to be the opposite of selfish. When I'm selfish, I'm more concerned about my own convenience or desires, and I'm not aware of what is going on around me. The message of Jesus, on the other hand, is all about helping others. Jesus' entire life (and death) was about doing things for others even when it was to his own detriment. The very leaving heaven to come to earth was to his detriment.

Yesterday, helping others meant that I operated on 4 hours of sleep, and spent four hours in the car. But because I was willing to do that, others were able to see the love of Jesus in action. That's the whole point of being a follower of Christ.