With Blinders On

I've mentioned before that our neighbor's house was destroyed by fire just before Christmas. At the time, as I related the story to others, I said that I drove past the home about an hour before I heard the sirens and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Now, I'm not so sure...

Day before yesterday, the kids and I came home, and stopped in the driveway to check the mailbox. My oldest son suddenly pointed across the road and we looked over to realize that, while we were gone for the day, they had completely torn down the remaining skeleton of the burned out house! There was a huge pile of rubble and a large orange crane sitting in the yard. I had just driven right past that location and NEVER saw any of that!

Now, I am wondering just what I missed on that fateful day when that house caught fire. I still believe that, if it had been blazing like it was when I heard the fire engines, I would have surely seen THAT...but did I perhaps cruise right past smoke pouring out the roof? Inside, a young mother and two small children were sleeping without the benefit of the warning a smoke detector could have provided. Thank God, the mother did wake up in time to get her babies out, but I shudder to contemplate the idea that she might not have...and maybe I drove right past the impending tragedy. After all, I completely missed the fact that a whole house had disappeared while I was out!

Needless to say, the whole event has prompted me to desire to be more observant. What else goes on around me that, because I'm lost in my own thoughts and focused on my own goals, I have overlooked? How many other things are falling to the ground around me and I haven't even noticed?

All around us, every day, there are people who are like that burned out shell of a house. They enter and leave our lives, broken, wounded, empty, blackened and in danger of collapse...and we get so caught up in our own wants and needs that we never lift our eyes from our own path and look around to see who else is with us on the road. We come and go, passing them by, while their need stares us in the face, seemingly impossible to miss...and yet, we manage to never see them.

Like that house, one day, they end up in a pile of rubble, sometimes beyond our ability to help. Maybe, though, if we had been looking and watching and actively caring enough to see them, we could have done something while there was just a puff of smoke, rather than waiting until they had totally burned out and ended up ruined, to be swept away and forgotten.

My prayer, today, is that I no longer go through this life with blinders on. Just as I wish I could have paid more attention to my neighbor's home, I pray that God will help me pay more attention to my Neighbor. Please, Lord, don't let me be the Priest and the Levite on the road, but give me the heart of the Samaritan!

Open my eyes and open my heart!!!