Are you familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan?  As Jesus tells it in the tenth chapter of the gospel of Luke, it describes how after two Jewish religious leaders who, upon seeing a man who had been accosted by robbers and left for dead on the side of the road, quickly turned away from him, a third man, a Samaritan, stopped to tend to him. Setting aside his immediacies, the Samaritan, a member of a people group despised by the Jews, cared for a man who had been brought up to hate him.  Not only did the Samaritan address the traveler's medical needs, he subsequently took him to a place of lodging and paid for his stay.  When the next morning the Samaritan had to leave, he told the proprietor that he would cover all the traveler's expenses for as long as he had to stay there.  It's a classic tale of selfless caring for one's fellow human being.
     Why do I mention the story of the Good Samaritan?  I came across a news item this morning from Israel that brought it vividly to mind.  On his way to Jerusalem to do his Ramadan prayers, a Palestinian physician, Ali Shroukh, came upon an overturned car in the road. When he looked inside, he saw part of a Jewish family, father, mother, and two children, severely injured, victims of a terrorist attack (the father was unfortunately dead).  Like the Good Samaritan of old, this modern day Good Samaritan set aside the demands of his schedule and, perhaps more importantly, any misgivings he may have had about helping a member of a people group whose more vociferous advocates had called repeatedly for death to all Palestinians, to offer help.  This brave physician elevated his basic human desire to help a person in need over any cultural remonstrations that may have told him otherwise.  He did what was most real, what was most true.  He did the most important thing:  he loved.
     God is love, the apostle John writes, and so he is.  When we love, when we reach selflessly to care for our fellow human being, we drive a stake into any and all efforts by people around the world to convince us to abandon, for religious, ethnic, political, or cultural reasons, a member of our humanity.  We remind the world that yes, we are more than social conflict and machination, and yes, even if we do not believe or state it openly, there is a God.
     Where would love be in an impersonal universe?
     Thank you so much, Dr. Ali Shroukh!  You humble us all.  (I hope you enjoyed Eid al Fitr!)