Can anything good come out of Down?

Can anything good come out of Down?! That’s what we might be wondering after they knocked Donegal out of the championship. But there was good news from another recent sporting event as Aaron Beggs from Bangor sacrificed a personal best to help a fellow runner in the Boston Marathon.

Ajay Haridasse was less than 200m from the finishing line when his body gave way. He wasn’t going to make it. Aaron did what no runner should do, he took his eyes off the finishing line! He put the interests of a man he didn’t know above his own interests. Seeing the man collapse out of the corner of his eye, he went over, lifted him up and put an arm around him. He helped him to stagger towards the finishing line, but it was still too much.  

Unbelievably another runner stopped to help, this time a Brazilian athlete, Robson De Oliveria. The three of them staggered over the finishing line at a remarkable 2 hours 44 minutes, a time that most of us would be delighted with! 

Their act of kindness came at a cost. In a race where every second matters, they were willing to sacrifice their own ambitions to help someone they had never met. Perhaps that is why so many others simply ran past.

In the famous parable of the Good Samaritan a priest and a Levite pass by the injured man, but a foreigner stops to help.  Jesus teaches that true neighbourliness means showing compassion regardless of background, politics or religion.

If we are honest, that does not come naturally to us. It is much easier to put ourselves first and care only for those who are like us. When we hear the story of the Good Samaritan, we usually imagine ourselves as the helper. But what if we are actually the wounded man lying helpless by the road?

The story resonates because, deep down, all of us know what it feels like to need help.  We need help from God because we’ve not loved Him or our neighbour.  But there is someone who has acted as a neighbour to us.  Jesus Christ felt such compassion for us that he deliberately entered into our pain, to lift us out of it. He didn’t just risk being beaten, he was wounded, stripped and not left half-dead but laid in the grave. He did that for you! Do you see how loved you are by God?

When no one else could help, when we stumbled and were alone. Jesus came to us. When we failed again, he did not abandon us. When we were hurting, crushed, bitter or defeated, he bound up our wounds.  Jesus pays it all himself.  Even as Jesus told this parable, he was on his way to Jerusalem to die on a cross to set us free from our slavery to going our own way and give us life. 

Can anything good come out of Down? Evidently it can. People asked the same question about Nazareth in Jesus’ day, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” The answer is Jesus Christ, the one who came to lift us when we fall, to get us to the finishing line and to give us the crown of life.