Where Are the Good Samaritans?

An email arrived in my box a couple of days ago.  It was from Diana, a friend and member of my church small group.  Among other things, she asks for prayers for a lady named Rheva, who had worked in the same office with Diana.  Rheva was fired last Friday as part of a general upheaval and restructuring of that office.  She also had lost her husband of many years to cancer just a couple of months ago.
Rheva has worked at that office for many years, and doesn’t have many skills, Diana says.  She has also been battling depression.  It seems that when it started raining in Rheva’s life, it just didn‘t quit.
Life is like that sometimes.  We manage to keep all of the balls in the air for awhile, but then they start dropping to the floor, and when they do, there seems to be no stopping.  We’re angry that we can’t keep afloat and we’re humiliated and feel guilty that we can’t keep things going.  We just want to crawl into a hole and let everything rush on by.
And those of us who are still juggling and still managing to keep things going don’t know what to do for the one we see who has failed.  We have enough to do just to keep ourselves going, and we don’t want to think too much about the one who is down for fear that it might be “catching”.  So we continue on, like the priest and Levite did with the man who had been robbed, and don’t look back.
It takes a special person to be a Good Samaritan.  It takes courage and backbone to stop and help.  It takes a mettle that I wish I had more of, because I too will “fall among thieves” one day.  And I’ll be wondering where the Good Samaritans are.