A beautiful person.

Let me tell you about a beautiful person we briefly met the other day.

My honey and I were leaving to go to the store and we decided to take the trash out on the way. As usual, we threw several bags on top of the car to drive them out to the dumpster at end of our long driveway. Well, we were deep in conversation and completely forgot about the trash bags on top of the car! We were a couple hundred yards down the road when we heard “thud,” “thud,” and then a “smash!”

“Oh, no,” we cried, “we forgot about the trash on top of the car!”

My honey made a quick U-turn and there it was, the smashed bag all over the highway! Further down a few yards were the first two bags still in tact – yea! So, Steve pulled over and picked up the whole bags from the highway. Since we were right in front of Roseland Plantation, he swung in and threw those bags away. Then we drove to the house to pick up trash bags and a rake. Yes, a rake. My husband wanted to rake up food mess from the grass. I didn’t think we needed to actually rake up small biodegradable material like food scraps, but he was insistent so we picked up the bags and a rake.

By the time we got back to the highway, no more than two or three minutes, there she was. A beautiful young lady, nicely dressed, probably just in her twenties, pulled over (nice car too) by the side of the road picking up our trash! Can you believe it? My husband jumped out of the car and started picking up the paper trash. When I got out of the car, I was his bag holder while he picked up and raked the small stuff. Please don’t underestimate the job of a bag holder. It really is very helpful and besides, Steve said it made the work go faster. Eventually, as we drew near her, we were able to talk to this lovely young lady. No, she didn’t see it happen. No, she didn’t know whose trash it was, but it didn’t matter. To her, it was trash on a beautiful east Texas highway and she for one was not going to just drive by. Wow! My honey and I were blown away.

But wait, that’s not all folks - there’s more. As we were talking with her telling her our story of how it happened, and thanking her for stopping to help, she thanked us. Yes, that’s what I said, she thanked us for coming back to pick up our mess. She said most people would have just driven off and not bothered turning around to pick it up. Steve said that would have been unconscionable.

Now all this is more interesting as we were just reading about the Good Samaritan. As you know the Good Samaritan was the foreign guy who was driving along an east Texas highway, minding his own business, when he came upon local boy who just got robbed and beaten. OK, he wasn’t driving and it wasn’t east Texas, but those details really don’t matter to the story. The point is, the Good Samaritan wasn’t related to the guy and it wasn’t his mess to deal with. He didn’t have to stop, spend his own time and money to help - but he did. Now here’s the part that got me. Steve and I were blown away by someone who would simply stop and help pick up a bunch of trash along the side of the road that wasn’t their trash, but the Lord Jesus Christ is expecting us to do much more than that! He really expects us to spend our precious little time and our ever-shrinking money to help people. Even people we don’t know! To do otherwise is unconscionable.

Isn’t it interesting how the Lord brings home lessons like this in everyday situations?

Joy,

Debbie