Streets and Stories

I walk the same downtown city blocks each day and pass some of the same people going to work, just like me. I see the visitors from the north stand in the park and take pictures. I watch the homeless man shuffle slowly by, and park himself on a bench in the shade. Just killing time.

Then I enter the office and I am forced to cage my thoughts that were forming. At lunch I sit outside and hear the man pacing the city blocks shouting his evangelical theories. I stop reading and muse about the people that pass by this small city center each day. The thing I love about hanging out in a downtown area is people-watching. From poor to elite, I will see the range of them as they walk along the street. Some of them seem a little crazy to me, like the guy shouting as he walked, but when I really focus on someone, my mind wonders what their story is. When I think about stories, I think about the person, and soon that leads me to the thought that he is my neighbor.

You know Jesus' story of the good Samaritan well. It's the story Jesus told while walking to Jerusalem with a crowd of 72. Jesus was asked who our neighbor would be, since He had just explained that we are to love our neighbors. Jesus responded with a story about a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. He was robbed and beaten along the road. A priest came by and kept walking. A religious Levite man also avoided him as he approached. Then, a Samaritan man stopped and his heart went out to him. He took care of him and paid for him to rest at an inn. Obviously, the Samaritan who treated the man kindly was the example of how to love our neighbors. (Luke 10.25-37)

When I people-watch, I think of stories in my head. I wonder how the behavior of those I observe reflects who they are and how that shows their character to the world. Sometimes a person I had pinned as rude surprises me by opening the door for several people. I am quickly reminded, by that quiet whisper in my soul, that each of them is my neighbor.

Stories do that: create the imaginative conditions in which we intuit an imperative command to leave the slovenly world of detached and impersonal discussions and become obedient participants in life, obedient followers of Jesus, neighbors to everyone we meet on our way to Jerusalem.

-Eugene Peterson