(Part 3 of "The Primer on Scripture and the Budget for 2009")
. . . Some may say that Isaiah's vision of the Kingdom of God is a pipedream completely out of our grasp this side of the grave, but I ask you if a world where children and the elderly do not die before their time because they lack access to basic medicine and health care; a world where workers fully share in the fruits of their labor so that they can live with dignity and without worry that their families will go homeless and their children hungry; a world where a child's future is not determined by what side of the tracks or equator she is born on; a world where peace and hope reign...is such a world truly beyond our grasp, an ideal that can be brought about only through miraculous, divine intervention?
My former boss, Rep. David Price used to illustrate an important point with the story of the Good Samaritan. We all know the story...a traveler is accosted by robbers, beaten, and left for dead on the side of the road. After he is ignored by several holy and righteous men of that time, along comes a the Good Samaritan, who sees the injured stranger, binds his wounds and takes him to a place where he can be nurtured back to health. But Rep. Price would ask, what if the story had not ended there? What if the next day the Samaritan had been walking along that same road and again came upon a man who had been set upon by robbers? What if it happened a third and a fourth time? The Samaritan surely would have treated those men the same way. But how long do you think it would take before the Good Samaritan's love of neighbor would have compelled him to say, "You know, someone really ought to be patrolling this road!" . . .
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