{"id":6112,"date":"2020-04-07T15:39:37","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T05:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6112"},"modified":"2020-04-07T15:39:39","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T05:39:39","slug":"good-samaritan-comfort-during-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/good-samaritan-comfort-during-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Samaritan comfort during Coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>\n<p>Who\nare the Samaritans? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Samaritans were rejected by the Jews at that time because they were a mixed breed of people, between the Judean people and the Assyrian kingdom. So, what you have in there are not actually Jews but a sort of half-half and their existence was the biggest insult to the Jews. Not only that but an adulterous Samaritan woman speaking to a single man was a big no-no at the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\nwoman would have been heavily rejected, ridiculed and hated. Can you imagine? We\nare 99.9% certain that five men left her, and she didn&#8217;t leave them because a\nwoman is destitute if she doesn&#8217;t have the support of a man in those days. So,\nyou have a woman who really is the lowest rung of all of society, hated by the\nJews, hated by her own people, hated by her own husbands and the one who lives\nwith her despises her too much to even marry her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If\nyou look back in the Old Testament everyone who met the love of their lives or\nmet their spouse, their bride and their groom met each other at a well. More\noften than not, they met each other at a very low point in their life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Jacob fleeing his brother Esau finds Rachel <\/li><li>Isaac meets Rebecca after leaving his family<\/li><li>Moses meets Zapora after fleeing Egypt due to his murder<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So,\neveryone at the lowest point in their life at the well meets the love of their\nlife. Meets the person that gives their life meaning. If you look here Christ\ncame to the well to meet His bride. To meet the person who was at the lowest\npoint in her life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you read the Bible this is the strongest theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Don&#8217;t\nworry about anything else you read in the Bible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>God\ncomes to those who are dejected, poor, rejected and humiliated. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is never to the mighty to the powerful or to the rich<strong>. <\/strong>Never. The one time he did that with King Saul, it was a perfect example of why he shouldn&#8217;t have done it. Instead, he goes to the rejected David.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is when you read the Bible this should be the message that you absorb, if you&#8217;re exalted, if you are rich, if you are comfortable, if you&#8217;re happy and everything&#8217;s awesome it is very difficult to find God because you&#8217;re too relaxed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\nis said, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cthough,\nthe Lord is on high yet, he regards the lowly, but the proud He knows from afar.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Psalm\n138:6 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cComfort\nyes comfort my people says your God speak comfort to Jerusalem and cry out to\nher that her warfare is ended that her iniquity is pardoned.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Isiah\n40:1-3<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It does not make sense to comfort those who are already comforted, but rather those who are downtrodden and rejected. This is the problem with our society now; it is that we live in a life of comfort, where we feel like we don\u2019t need Christ\u2019s comfort. The tiniest thing has brought us to our very knees as we\u2019ve grown comfortable the things that comfort us is our lifestyle is our way of life; freedom, schools, comfort, air conditioning, freedom of travel. All of these things are our comfort. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\nare now experiencing a time where they&#8217;re being shaken a little bit and I think\nwhilst reading the Catholic epistle today, we have a beautiful reminder of this.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<em>Come now you who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city spend a year thereby and sell and make a profit, whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow for what is your life, it is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is no better message for today&#8217;s society. We live as if the next day is guaranteed, but the reality is not. We have grown too comfortable in the way we are living, and the viruses come, and it&#8217;s upended everything in a way that we have never seen before and with good reason, we are terrified and anxious and scared and worried, but should we be? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At\nthis time is when as Christians we should be at peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\nis a reminder that we are placing too much trust in things that are fleeting,\nthat it is time to trust the One Person that is eternal, God. This is the\nmoment where we have to run to God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even with the Church back in the day, we see that when the Church was really under the pump and a lot of Christians were being killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cThis was when one was really a believer. When one used to go to martyrdom with courage in the church.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Origen<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People\ndidn\u2019t flee and protect themselves. The Christians never did that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018I&#8217;ve\ngot to protect my own.\u2019 That is a concept completely foreign to Christianity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\nshould be \u2018I have to look out for everyone else. I have to serve everyone else.\u2019\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\nis a Christian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We don&#8217;t care for ourselves we care for everyone around us. We care for the world, by this, the world will know that we&#8217;re Christians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why?\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As\none of the early Church fathers says to \u201c<em>See how they love one another. See\nhow much they love that if we don&#8217;t love and we behave worse the\nnon-Christians. Then we&#8217;ve disgraced that holy name by which we are called.\u201d<\/em>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\nis our time, this is the time of Christianity to demonstrate that Christ is in\nthe world, that He is working. &nbsp;He hasn&#8217;t\nabandoned the world; He&#8217;s just waking it up. Let us not focus on my own but\nrather on all around, so that we may truly emulate Christ and reveal Him in all\nwe do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just\nlike the Samaritan woman, Christ comes to where we are, to come and heal us and\ndwell within us. So when we&#8217;re at home, we can make our home a little Church\nhow when we go together with our kids, at the table and we eat food and we pray\nand we say \u2018Thank you God for the food that you&#8217;ve given us, for the blessings\nyou&#8217;ve put upon us.\u2019 You are a little Church in your home, that is the church.\nEvery night you stand in prayer and you lift up your heart to God and you are\nstanding at His throne, it is exactly the same as if you&#8217;re in church standing\nbefore the throne of God. Because God is within you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who are the Samaritans? The Samaritans were rejected by the Jews at that time because they were a mixed breed of people, between the Judean people and the Assyrian kingdom. So, what you have in there are not actually Jews but a sort of half-half and their existence was the biggest insult to the Jews. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/good-samaritan-comfort-during-coronavirus\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Good Samaritan comfort during Coronavirus&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[204,243,244],"class_list":["post-6112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-coronavirus","tag-fr-sam","tag-good-samaritan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6114,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112\/revisions\/6114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}