the one who loves
In the blaze of afternoon, we slide our chairs up to the table, turning coffee mugs with our fingers, light and quick. Let me look at you, I think, but I don’t say it aloud; my teenager finds overt attention awkward. I want to say “parenty” things she will not believe until she sits at a scarred table sipping coffee with her own daughter, things like “You look different every day, in tiny ways suddenly grown.” I want to tell her that I see changes in the gloss of her hair, the maturity of her smile. I want to tell her that her wisdom sometimes surprises me, as does her thoughtful tone and the careful way she considers her life. I show up sometimes expecting the old adolescent ambivalence, and she talks of changing the world, one relationship at a time. I want to say these things, but I know it will slam some invisible door she doesn’t yet even realize we’ve opened together, so I sip my coffee and I smile.
She says, “You know, we all need to be nicer to each other. I mean, we’re not very nice.”
We’re not? I imagine myself nice. What does that look like, anyway? I sip my coffee and I smile.
She says, “I mean, it’s one thing not to hurt someone intentionally, not to participate in hurting someone. But,” she pauses, closes her eyes while the steam from her coffee drifts toward her nose, “it’s another thing not to do anything to help someone when you didn’t hurt them but you still know they’re hurting.”
I sit my coffee on the table, wondering if she knows she’s telling a parable. I could flip there for her in the Book, smooth the crisp pages with my fingers, read to her about a man beaten and thrown in a ditch. Do you know this one?
The man lays in the muck half dead, no longer sure of the difference between the dampness of the ground and the stickiness of his own blood, nor even possessing the presence of mind to care. His consciousness hazes until he’s hardly aware of anything besides his own pain.
Of course, I’m retelling; those aren’t the words. But we’ve all been both the man and the witnesses of him. More often, our gaping wounds seep on the inside instead of dripping on the dirt.
“You know?” She says, drilling me with her stormy eyes. I sip my coffee and smile. Listening is the key to this, I tell my mama mind, listening more than speaking.
“Yes, I know.” I nod appreciatively.
“I mean, I think I’m a fairly nice person, but sometimes—okay, I admit it—sometimes I don’t say anything when I could say something. I mean, I don’t ask someone who’s sitting all alone if they’re okay, or I don’t tell people to stop when they’re talking bad about someone else. I don’t participate, I mean, I don’t hurt anyone on purpose, but I also don’t do anything about it.”
She stops, looking at me.
“Yes. I’m guilty too,” I say, thinking of my own regrets. I have been one of the ones who walked on by.
So, a couple of card-carrying, see-you-in-the-assembly, quote-you-some-scripture “nice” guys happen to notice the guy in the ditch, beaten within an inch of his life. Naturally appalled, they react appropriately without going near. They gasp; they pray; they murmur sympathetic phrases. But the first one by realizes that stopping to help will render him completely unable to perform any of his official duties for at least the rest of the day. The whole situation feels rude and inconvenient, and he feels, but would not say, sorry to have seen. In wrestling briefly with feelings of obligation, he feels satisfied knowing that the beaten man is also incredibly unwise and most likely could have avoided the whole mess with a few better choices in life. Bad things like this don’t happen to truly good people, right? The second potential helper feels ill-equipped to handle this level of detritus and certain someone more important will happen along at any moment. Some people have gifts and resources for handling these things; some don’t. Better let the experts, or even just the people with more time and energy, take on the rescue. They walk on, leaving the bleeding man and his shallow breaths in the dirt.
“Well, that’s not enough for me anymore.”
I smile, nodding. “No, not for me either.” I pick up my coffee and take a sip.
“I want to make a difference. I want to help people. I want to let them know they matter.”
“Yes, yes, yes. I want that too,” I say, but I’m also thinking, look what God has done in you.
Fortunately for the hurting man, another person on the way to something and busy with living life also travels by. The funny thing is that the “nice” guys would not have trusted him (or her) at all. They would not have invited him into their conversations, much less their worship. They would not have chosen a seat next to her on the bus. And yet, when this person happens upon the mess in the ditch, he cares. She discards the litany of things whirling in her mind and kneels, without concern for her knees, in the muck. He rummages in his bags for something, anything, with which to tend to the wounds he sees. She has some oil, some wine, and these she pours over the man’s wounds, gently lifting the bruised limbs. Dirt and blood dribble and pool on the ground beneath. The one who loves slowly rips up a shirt for bandages. The one who loves values the hurting man more than whatever they had planned to do; he helps the man into the car, she sees the wounded soul safe. It is not enough for the one who loves, witnessing pain, to pass on by.
Jesus tells the story so much better than I do–it’s his story (Luke 10:25-37)–but the point is this:
Being the one who loves is much nicer than being one of the “nice” guys.
