A man was frantically swimming towards the shore shouting, "Which way to the shore? Which way to the shore? People watching him said to themselves, "If he has swam this far, he will find the shore himself." But within a few moments, the man drowned in the sea. When people rescued him, they were shocked to find that he was totally blind.
Religion must help us spontaneously respond to people in need. It is possible that we may be practising every ritual in the book, following every rubric of worship, making pilgrimages to holy places and yet being less human. There was a large group following Jesus everywhere he went, including his own disciples. But there were several occasions when they were insensitive and Jesus had to correct them.
When the blind man was crying "Jesus, have pity on me", they tried to silence him. But Jesus healed him. When the Canaanite woman kept crying after Jesus, they tried to silence her. But Jesus reached out to her. When Jesus was consoling the Samaritan woman at the well, the disciples raised an eyebrow over a Jew talking to a Samaritan.
A very poor Scottish farmer one day heard a child crying for help. The child had fallen in a dangerous marsh filled with dead plant waste.
The boy was sinking into it. The farmer rushed to his help and saved him. The next day a nobleman came to the farmers' house to thank him for saving his son.
"I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life." "No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hut. "Is that your son?" the nobleman asked. "Yes," the farmer replied proudly.
"I'll make you a deal. Let me take him and give him a good education. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll grow to a man you can be proud of."
The farmer humbly accepted the offer. Over the years, the farmer's son graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become famous throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.
Many years later, the nobleman's son was stricken with pneumonia. What saved him? Pencillin.
The nobleman was none other than Lord Randolph Churchill, the father of Sir Winston Churchill. God assures abundant blessings to those who respond spontaneously to the needy. Jesus says, "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (Luke 6:38). "The measure you give will be the measure you get back and still more will be given to you."
