It was early in the morning, and I was eating breakfast while watching the news when there was a breaking news story that at once was gruesome and disconcerting. It made my head spin and my heart sink. As I chewed on my morning sandwich, I saw a 78 year old man being flipped in the air by the second of two speeding vehicles. As if this wasn't horrifying enough, I sat aghast as the man lay motionless in the middle of the street as cars drove by and people watched.
Nobody ran to help. Nobody even approached!
Then I got angry. I thought to myself, "how could this happen?" What could be going through the bystander's minds that would impede them from even getting close? What does that say about them and about the state of our society?
This gnawed at me the rest of the day. When I arrived home from work, I found out that 4 people had called 911 and asked for assistance for the man. That mollified the malaise that I had been feeling toward the situation but only slightly.
"How could they just watch?" I thought.
It would be easy to excuse these people's behavior; they could have been in shock and thus frozen into inaction; others might have thought that if they got involved it might make them late for work; still others might have thought about the legal consequences of helping out. All seemingly valid excuses, but the problem is that the right thing to do is always the right thing to do, and that was to approach the man and see how they could help. It was as if the good Samaritan story was being played out before my eyes, except that there was no good Samaritan.
Then as I took it to prayer God helped me to see things differently.
It is easy to judge our brother in the midst of such horrifying circumstances. We could say, "I would have rushed out to help, it's a no brainer!" But would I have? Or would I have found a way to justify my inaction?
I had a friend who would pray every time we passed by an accident scene that God would protect the people and help them to find Him. It convicted me, because I realized that I lacked the compassion that seemed so instinctive to him.
And so it was on that Thursday morning.
The truth is that my first thought was to judge, rather than to pray. I sat there feeling helpless, wishing I could do something, and all the while I had the best lifeline right at my disposal--prayer!
Did I pray?
No.
So I too stood by and did nothing while that man struggled for life. May it never be so again. So now I look at the situation differently. I can empathize with what the bystanders were going through, and I can learn that inaction is never the right solution.
Copyright 2008 by Jimmy Monreal
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How about you? Did you see the footage? What do you think about the whole situation? How did you react? What can we learn from this experience?
