I don’t often find the words of a song running in my head. So I was surprised recently when ‘With A Little Bit of Luck’ from the 1950’s musical, My Fair Lady seemed to haunt me. You may remember Alfred Doolittle’s jaunty little song that went The Lord above made man to help his neighbour … but with a little bit of luck you won’t be there when he comes round.
Later I wondered if this was simply my memory doing its job or was it inspiration. You see I had just received a heartbreaking letter from someone who was at her wits end and asked rather angrily why God did not do something for people in these hard economic times? But, yes of course, God did do something: he made neighbours, he made man to love his neighbours and help out in difficult times. Christ came back to it again and again. You must love your neighbour as yourself.
Christ had learned this at his mother’s knee, and while he travelled round preaching, he was always dependent on the generosity of strangers. When people came to him broken and in pain, he never failed to cure them. He poured his life out for his neighbours. One of his listeners tried to wriggle out of it by questioning who exactly his neighbour was, only to have to admit that his neighbour was the Good Samaritan, the one who helped the man who was mugged.
Like Alfred Doolittle we could all think of the neighbour as coming around to give us trouble, whereas in the parable of the Good Samaritan the situation was very different. It wasn’t a case of someone deciding whom he would help, of being able to pick and choose who to help. The story is told from the point of view of the injured man, and he is only too willing to accept help from anyone who will give it to him, even from the despised Samaritan. Remember, the life you save may be your own.
I learned this lesson from personal experience in childhood. A neighbour of ours in the poverty-stricken days of 1940s opened her small artisan house to her sister, her husband and their four young children when they lost their home and business. It cannot have been easy for any one of them. There was tough love, sometimes tears and recriminations, and always children’s laughter. It dragged on for six months before they were able to find new accommodation, but there was no question of their not being welcome. And they more than repaid her kindness when later she was old and infirm.