Last month I wrote about the eye-opening question I saw in a book and have been asking ever since: “What needs to be done here?” It trickles into my mind all the time. Now if only I can get it to trickle into my behavior.
In my small group a few months ago, we talked about a local incident in which a woman jumped out of a moving car to flee her abusive boyfriend. After landing in the street, she flagged down the car behind her, which happened to be a mom with two young kids in the back. The mom opened her car to the woman, only to be shot at minutes later by the boyfriend. Miraculously, no one was hurt, but of course it leads to the question, did the mom do the right thing? What would I have done?
Would anyone have asked this question 40 years ago, I wonder? Was it a no brainer to scoop a bleeding woman up off the street?
Then I think of a recent experience we had ourselves. My husband Kevin was pumping gas into our van when a “blind man” started walking across the street toward the filling station. He was all over the place, staggering, walking dangerously close to moving cars, until a woman got out of her car to help him. She got him to the curb, and my husband took over from there, walking him into the store and giving him some money to spend. Like a relay race, a man in the store took his arm and helped him around, eventually offering to give him a ride to where he needed to go. (And yes, this guy had a young kid in the back of the car.) Now I put “blind man” in quotes because we had our suspicions. Serious suspicions. Was he really blind, or was this his act, his way to gain enough attention and pity to get dinner and catch a ride?
We’ll never know—but here’s how I know Kevin did the right thing. As we were pulling away, a woman inside the store ran out to acknowledge what he had done. His actions had spoken to her, and her affirmation of his actions spoke to me and to our kids in the car. It almost wasn’t about the blind man. And whether he was really blind or not didn’t matter. What mattered was that a whole lot of people—including drivers who saw one in their midst jump out of her car to help—saw people just like them “doing what needs to be done here.”
Do we pick up a bleeding woman from the street? Yes! Even if it means potential risk to our own children? I still say yes. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, because it’s what needs to be done in order for us to live in the kind of world we all want to live in. A world in which we are servants, not bystanders. Put me in that situation and what will I do? I wish I could say for sure. What I can do is pray for the courage to do what needs to be done, in all situations, no matter the cost, because I know that’s what Jesus calls "love."
