Reflections for Youth - Playing the cards that are dealt

Have you ever played the card game called “Beggar my Neighbor?”   I haven’t played it in a long time.  I thought about it this week when I was reading the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke.

It’s a kind game that’s very much like the game War. Two people play and you deal out the cards equally. To start, each player turns over a card.   The only cards that are important are the face card.  If you turn over a face card, the other person must give you a certain number of cards. Aces are worth 4, Kings 3, Queens 2, and Jacks 1.

The object is to keep playing until someone wins all the cards.

This is one of those games based on luck. Whether you will be able to win is really based on what cards you have in your deck that you are dealt.  If you have more face cards than the other person then you have an advantage. This isn’t a game where you can really have a strategy. You don’t get to choose your cards you just have to play what you are dealt.

When I was a kid and being dramatic and was in a situation that I had deemed hopeless – my grandmother used to remind me that in any situation there is always something you can choose.

Is there anything in this card game that you get to choose? You can choose which player who goes first. And you can choose how you treat the person – your neighbor - that you are playing against.

 And when you are playing it might be important to remind yourself that you didn’t get to pick the cards you started with and either did your neighbor.

There are things that we don’t get to choose. For example, we don’t get to choose where we are born and what things are like in that place.

Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan which is a story that asks us to think about our neighbors and it’s also a story about people making choices. In the story, there are things that – just like in the card game that people choose - and things that people don’t.

Read Luke 10: 25-37

Jesus tells about a man who was going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and some robbers attacked him. They beat him and tore off his clothes and he is left lying on the road.
The robbers chose to rob the man. But the man didn’t choose to be robbed.

Jesus tells about the priest and a Levite who passed by the man and chose not to help.  Then he tells of a man from Samaria that did stop to help and made sure the man was able to be in a place where he could get care and be safe.

Jesus teaches in this story that the man who helped – the Samaritan – was a neighbor.  A common question that is asked when reading this story is “Who is my neighbor?”  But I am thinking this week, as I reread this story, that Jesus is also asking us to focus on ourselves as a neighbor.  I am the neighbor. 

Jesus says to the lawyer in the story that yes, the one who helped, the Samaritan, is the neighbor.

So maybe the question that we ask ourselves after hearing this parable shouldn’t be “who is my neighbor” but “how am I being a neighbor?”

The Samaritan most likely was born a Samaritan.  The fact that the Jews and Samaritans where historically not friends and didn’t like each other was something that the Samaritan man didn’t get to choose.

But what could he choose? He could choose who he could help. He could choose how he was going to be a neighbor.  He could choose – even though he knew he might be hated

The very important thing that Jesus teaches us that we can choose who we love and who we help for ourselves.  Jesus tells us, again and again, to love God and love our neighbor.   This sounds pretty simple but we know that it is WAY more complicated.

Here is what I am thinking about this week:
I am, like everyone else, just trying to figure it all out – who to help, what to believe, what to think about certain issues and events that are happening in the world.  This parable reminds me that Jesus is calling me to deeply consider and remind myself about what things that I – and other people get to choose. And what things we don’t.  

God is calling us to consider the other. How does it make a difference in how we help people, how we show compassion, support, and empathy for people when we are paying attention to the things that others don’t get to chose.  Jesus paid attention to those things.

Questions for the week:

What are some things that you don’t get to choose?

How would paying attention to what others don’t get to choose help you relate to them?

Where do you see God working in the world this week?