I just love this commercial. It makes me cry every time. And yes, we all know that State Farm is there, but what the commercial is really saying is that we need to be there for each other. We need to be "good neighbors".
My mom and sister have been participating in a ladies share group at their church. One of their recent topics was about this very thing...how we are called to be neighbors...and to "love [our] neighbors as [ourselves]" (from Luke 10:27).
In discussing that concept, the ladies looked at the rest of that chapter in Luke, which is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. How neither the priest nor the Levite stopped to help the man who had been beaten and robbed, but the Samaritan (who was usually looked down upon) did. And how that Samaritan was far more of a neighbor to the injured man than either the priest or the Levite.
The ladies in the share group discussed which character in the story they thought they would be. They discussed "Good Samaritans" in their own lives. They asked, "If you had to call on someone outside of your family at 3:00 in the morning, who would it be?" "Would you be someone that others would say they would call?"
Those questions really got me thinking. I could think of two people that I am pretty sure would be there in a heartbeat, no matter what time. One of them, my friend Katie, was the first of my friends to come see me in the hospital when I was diagnosed with Leukemia. She brought me dinner only moments after finding out that my medication had stopped working a couple of years later. The other is my friend, Ashley. She drove from Dallas to Abilene to be the only one of my bridesmaids that didn't know everyone else. She has taken care of her aunt and her grandmother when they were sick. I'm sure that there are others, too so I don't want to underestimate the rest of my besties. But these 2 were the first ones I thought of. I am very fortunate to have such good friends. But I find myself wondering if I would be on their lists of who to call. I don't know. I certainly hope I'm that kind of friend.
My mom mentioned the Tracy Lawrence song, "You Find Out Who Your Friends Are", and I think it's very fitting here.
So there you have it. That's all for today. I hope that I'm a "Good Neighbor", a "Good Samaritan" for you, and I hope you feel like you can call on me when you're in a bind. I'll be there.
