The Man on the Verge and the Slow Lane

It was raining in the way it rains in November, and it was about ten past six, and the light was going.

A car on the verge with the hazards on and the bonnet up, and a man standing beside it in a jacket that was not for this.

He saw him from about two hundred yards.

And he did the thing. He checked his mirror, which is what you do when you are going to pull in, and then he did not pull in, and he went past at fifty and looked at him in the mirror for about a second and a half afterwards.

He was late. That was true. He had been at work since seven and there was a thing at home and he was, genuinely and not as an excuse, running on nothing.

And he has thought about it every single day since. Every day. In the car mostly, and at about four in the morning twice.

It is not guilt exactly, or it is not only guilt. It is that he cannot work out what happened. He is not a man who drives past. He has helped people. There is a woman two streets over whose fence he fixed and did not mention.

And on a Tuesday in November he checked his mirror and then did not pull in and he does not know why, and the not knowing is the part he keeps going back to.

If you have driven past somebody and carried it, you know that stretch of road. And you know the shape of it: I do not know what I am, because a man who is what I thought I was would have pulled in.

The word, and then the two who went past

Let me sit in the passenger seat and say the plain thing, because you have been over this alone for months.

The problem is not the man on the verge. He got picked up. Somebody got there, or the recovery came, and he is fine and he has forgotten it entirely, and you are the only person in the world still carrying that evening.

The problem is that you found something out about yourself in one and a half seconds and you have not been able to put it anywhere.

So let me put the word straight first.

Blessed does not mean being the sort of person who pulls in. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. It was on you at ten past six in the rain in November, which is a sentence nobody has said to you, and it is on you tonight.

Now the story, and I want to start with the two who went past, because everybody skips them in about four words.

And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.Luke 10:31-32

Look at what the text says about the second one. He came and looked on him.

He stopped enough to look. He got to the place, he looked at the man, and then he went. That is not a monster. That is somebody who very nearly did it.

Jesus puts a man in that story who almost stopped, and does not tell us why he did not, and never comes back to him.

You are in a story that Jesus told, and He put somebody in it who looked and went on and never explained him. Luke 10:32 records the looking and the going in one verse without a motive attached, and it is the Holy Spirit who is able to hand a man a passage that does not require him to have an answer about himself.

What the Samaritan actually had

Now the man who did stop, because you have been assuming he had something you do not have.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds.Luke 10:33-34

Came where he was.

That is the phrase, and it is the whole of it. Not: had more time. The text does not say he had more time. Not: was less tired. Not: had money, which he does produce later but which is not the first thing.

He came where he was.

It is a phrase about physical location and it is the only distinguishing thing in the entire parable. Three men saw. One went over.

And notice the order. He came where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. The going over comes before the compassion in that sentence.

Which is the opposite of how you have been thinking about it. You have been assuming compassion produces the pulling in, and that yours failed, and that is a fact about your character. In the text, the crossing over comes first and the feeling arrives when he is standing there.

You have been waiting for a feeling to produce an action, and the parable puts them in the other order. Luke 10:33 has him come where he was and then have compassion, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears compassion as fruit in a person rather than issuing it as a prerequisite at fifty miles an hour.

That does not excuse November. It explains it better than you have been able to. At two hundred yards, in the rain, running on nothing, you did not have a feeling, and you were waiting for one, and it did not come in time, and you had already gone past.

What to do about a road you are not on any more

Now the practical thing, because you cannot go back to a verge in November and there is no version of this where you make it right with that man.

Here is what the parable does not ask. It does not ask you to feel worse. Nobody in that story is improved by a person on a road three months later carrying it at four in the morning.

What it asks is one thing and it is available today: come where somebody is.

Not a grand thing. The crossing over is the whole content. Go to where a person actually is, physically, today, with whatever is in your hands, and let the feeling turn up when you are standing there, because that is the order the text uses.

You have a road today with somebody on it, and the crossing over is the only part that is being asked. Luke 10:33 makes coming where he was the distinguishing act, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies what arrives once a person is standing in the right place.

And nothing comes back to you for it. There is no credit and no offset and it does not settle November. This site will not tell you that doing a good thing today buys off a thing you did in the rain, because that would be a transaction, and the moment there is a transaction it is a different activity entirely.

November happened. It is forgiven, and it does not need to be paid for, and there is nothing to pay it with.

You have something forgiven rather than something outstanding, and forgiven things do not require installments. Scripture puts forgiveness on the ground of what Christ has done rather than on what a person does afterwards, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with your spirit that it is settled.