THE RIGHT QUESTION
There were a thousand reasons not to stop.
I was running late for a Very Important... well, whatever it was that
I was running late for that day. The freeway was busy -- I might have
caused an accident or something. Surely the Highway Patrol would be along
soon, and it's their job to help stranded motorists, isn't it? And I had
on my navy blue suit, with a light blue shirt and a silk tie. Not exactly
car-fixing clothes, you know?
Let's see -- that makes 1,004 reasons not to stop. And here's 1,005:
I am the world's worst auto mechanic. Public enemy No. 1 on the AAA's Ten
Most Wanted list. Mr. WhatsaWrench.
The first time I tried to change my car's oil myself I did fine --
until I forgot to put the new oil in. The boys down at the garage had a
big laugh over that one. The next time, I remembered to put in the new oil
-- only I put it in the transmission. That triggered a letter from the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chryslers. They suggested I get a
horse.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. God has given
me other talents to use for the benefit of mankind. But I'm not sure how
much it would have helped that lady whom was stranded by the side of the
freeway if I would have pulled over and belched on cue.
So I didn't pull over. I drove on by, just like hundreds of other
drivers on the freeway that day. And I felt guilty about it.
So I turned off at the next exit and made my way back to see if I
could at least give her a lift or something. But by the time I got back to
her, an Hispanic gentleman had pulled in behind her, and was tinkering
away at her car's engine like he knew what he was doing.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked.
"No, thank you," the lady replied. "This nice man says he can fix it."
At that moment, a voice from under the hood shouted: "OK, try it now!"
The woman reached for the key and turned it. The engine started
beautifully.
"It was your serpentine belt," the man explained, wiping his hands on
his pants. "It slipped off. It's pretty worn. You want to take that to a
mechanic, get a new one put on."
The woman tried to give the freeway Samaritan some money, but he
declined and waved as she drove off. It wasn't until we started walking
toward our cars that I noticed he had five more reasons not to stop than I
did; his family was sitting in the station wagon, waiting patiently. "Do
you stop and help people like this often?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Somebody has to," he said. "What's she going to do if
nobody helps?"
And for him, that was reason enough.
In his final sermon, given the night before his assassination, Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. took as his text the Biblical parable of the Good
Samaritan. In the story, a man is attacked by thieves and left by the
roadside. Several travelers happen upon him, but they pass by.
Eventually, someone does stop to help, although it is the one person who
might have had a reason not to. He is a Samaritan and the victim is a Jew.
Those folks didn't get along any better back then than they do now.
According to Dr. King, those who passed by the injured man were asking
themselves the wrong question: "If I help this man, what will happen to
me?"
The Good Samaritan stopped to help because he asked the right
question: "If I don't help this man, what will happen to him?"
Dr. King spent a lifetime asking the right question. If we truly want
to honor him, then we need to ask ourselves that question, too.
No matter how many reasons we may think we have not to.
-Joseph B Walker
GOOD COOKS
When my son was 11 years old, he got a small job helping out with a
traveling carnival while it was in our town.
He didn't come home at lunch time, phoning instead to tell me he was
fine and had found a few days work helping out at an exhibit. He turned up
for supper as usual however after he finished work.
I asked him how he had managed at lunch and he told me he had made
some new friends at the carnival, some young men who were twin brothers,
and their mom and dad. They had paid him a few dollars and invited him for
lunch in return for helping them set up their exhibit and wanted him to
return the next day to help with other chores.
I was glad he had found new friends but a little apprehensive about
the type of people that might be traveling in a carnival.
"Oh Mom, these are just normal everyday people like anyone else. They
just work at a carnival instead of in a store or something. Come down
tomorrow and meet them yourself," he said.
So the next day I went to the carnival and to the exhibit he had
directed me to. The twin brothers turned out to be Siamese twins, joined
at the chest.
He hadn't thought this fact was noteworthy enough to mention.
When I brought it to him he said, "Yes, I noticed that too. Do you
know that their mom has to make all their clothes because it's so
difficult to find anything to fit them? They're also really good cooks.
Today, Joe, the one on the right, made me spaghetti for lunch."
What others see first in a person (or persons) is not what a child
considers important.
Where I saw Siamese twins, he saw people having difficulty buying
clothes that fit, and young men who were good cooks.
It was a lesson I have thought about many times over the years.
-Charlotte Mansfield
Calves and Common Sense
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous nineteenth-century poet and essayist, was
out one day trying to get a calf into the barn. "But he made the common
mistake of thinking only of what he wanted: Emerson pushed and his son
pulled.. But the calf stiffened his legs and stubbornly refused to leave
the pasture.
"The Irish housemaid saw their predicament. She couldn't write essays and
books; but on this occasion at least, she had more horse sense, or calf
sense, than Emerson. She put her maternal finger in the calf's mouth, and
let the calf suck her finger as she gently led him into the barn."(1)
The lesson is simple but profound: The best way to influence others is
byconsidering their desires, not just your own.
(1)Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1936)
- Submitted by: Great Life Lessons
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