In order for the story of his kindness to speak to us across the ages he needed to be more than nice. He needed to enlist the sinews of courage & the gristle of persistence to risk helping a stranger from a radically different background. He needed to recruit his muscle to lift the wounded man, shoulder him onto his animal, walk him to the inn, pay for his care & return to check on the man he saved.   

   Jesus created The Good Samaritan to teach us, particularly caregivers, that real compassion is a muscular marriage of strength & kindness. Sweet gestures require brave action to become true expressions of love. 

   Humanity's sun shines when tenderness glows with strength. 

  "That my kindness exists comes not simply by choosing kindness," poet Anis Mojgani tells us, "but by choosing it over the cruelty I am capable of."

   Martin Luther King, Jr. modeled this choice. As others clamored for cruelty King campaigned for tough-minded tenderness. 

   It takes bravery to overcome our basest desires: our lust for revenge, our ego's instinct to counterattack when feeling hurt, our temptation to take advantage of the vulnerable. And there is the blindness of raw arrogance – that priest who ignored the pain of the wounded man in favor of his own self-importance.   

   The most gentle sunlight is born from the most powerful blazes. Even fireplace flames rise from wood split with strength.

   Love is so inconvenient. Storms & stridency threaten it at every turn. That is why no path is more challenging to walk each day than the one burning with love's heat as well as its light. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman