good neighbors..

There once was a man who was walking in downtown Atlanta.  He was a poor guy.  He didn’t have any liquid or non-liquid assets.  He didn't own stock.  He didn't have a savings account.  He didn't even have a debit card.  Coming to think of it, he was really wondering where his social security card was.  It had been a long time since he had seen it or even needed, for he hadn't been hired for any jobs as of late. He recently had been evicted from his low income housing, and he had found himself begging for money on the streets.  He had developed a bad case of alcoholism, something that started when he was a teenager-drinking away the nights while listened to his drunk dad beat mercilessly on his mother.  

Everything was going pretty crappy, to be honest.  His life had wasted down to nothing.  He had countlessly tried to pull himself up off the streets but every single time he thought that he was getting back on his feet, something would come along and knock him back down again. You could call it bad luck, bad genes, bad upbringing.  Whatever the reasons were, he felt like he woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day and never stopped, not until he lost his bed altogether.

One fateful day, things changed.  He was walking down the street, peaking around trash cans and checking pay phones for coins in the return tray.  And then it happened.  He saw one of those envelopes that you get from the bank teller when you withdraw a bunch of cash.  He looks around to see if the person who lost it was around.  The crowded midday street, filled with financial minds and conventioneers, never paid any attention. He stoops down to grab the envelope, noticing how thick the contents were.  Picking up the little slip of white paper with the Wachovia running down the side in blue, he reached inside and saw 1500 dollars in cash.  He smiles, because his day has come, at least for a little while.  Placing the envelope deep in his heavy jacket, he makes a quick turn down an alley.  

That is when they came for him.  It turns out that some people had noticed.  Street guys like himself, they knew what he had and they took off after him.  He tried to get away, but he ran into a fence.  He was trapped.  

They beat him without mercy.  They stripped him of all his clothes.  They found the money, divided it up amongst themselves and then they beat him some more.  They spat on him.  They kicked him with brutal, almost lethal force.  

There he lay, bleeding and dying on the street.  The amazing thing is that no one would help him.  No one would stop and pick him up and take care of him.  He just lay there, completely unconscious.  I just cannot overstate how surprising it is that in this situation, no one would stop and help.  There was this business man who came along.  He was very successful.  Wore a crisp, expensive suit. He was on his way to a meeting with community leaders on how to clean up downtown.  How to get people off the streets.  The businessman walked by our friend in the street, looked down and said to himself, “What a pity.  Someone should do something about that.” And he kept on, making his way to his meeting.  

Another man walked by.  A minister.  He was speaking at a conference of pastors that had flown in from around the country.  The minister was on his way to talk to the crowd of excited clergy about his favorite parable: The Good Samaritan.   He was rehearsing the lines of his message, lost and deep in thought, when he literally ran right into the guy.  He looked down at him, saw how the blood from the man’s wounds had rubbed onto his polished wing tips.  He never thought about the guy.  He just kept thinking about what he was going to say, and he stepped right over him.  He was running late, you see.  

It wasn’t until later on that day, right at that time that the sun was about to slip off the side of the earth for the night, that a prostitute, who was about to begin her night of work, stumbled upon our broken friend.  

If you could have been there, you would have been amazed.  You wouldn’t believe what had happened if you had seen it with your own eyes. 

The woman takes off her thick, faux and matted fur coat, and she wraps him up in it.  Shivering, she reaches down and is somehow able to hoist him up, to carry him over her shoulders.  The prostitute stumbles down the street, cursing to herself about the time and money that she is losing by helping this guy, but carrying him none the less, because something deep inside of her just will not let her pass him by.  Reaching the hospital, she is completely out of breath and seriously considering a stop in smoking.  

The emergency room is full of the disasters that have happened throughout the city in just a day.  They say that it would take hours for him to see a doctor, even if he did have insurance, which he doesn’t.  They won’t see him.  So she takes him to the ladies room.  She puts him down on the floor.  From there, she sneaks towels out of a nearby closet and pumps some soap from the shiny sink dispensers.  She cleans him up.  She dresses his wounds.  She takes care of him.  

Finally, knowing that there is little hope for him without a doctor, the woman walks out and plops down several thousand dollars in cash on the receptionist’s desk.  She says “Will that take care of him?”  The receptionist slowly nods her head.  It was all the money she had made that month.  She does not trust banks, apparently. Only herself.  From there, she walks out into the street, shivering from the cold and missing her jacket, then, in the very back of her mind she thinks “I wonder who would take care of me if something like that happened?  I don’t even know who my neighbors are.”  Just then a car slows down at the curb. A man rolls down his window, they exchange a few words, and she gets inside, speeding off into her night of work. 

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inspired by tony campolo.