I Couldn’t Care Less!

I Couldn’t Care Less!

My wife, two daughters, a boyfriend and myself flew to the great state of Oregon. After we landed in Oregon, we rented a van and went on a driving trip around the state. We saw the beautiful coast, we saw Crater lake, we saw Mount Hood, Jefferson Mountain, The three sisters mountains. We drove along the Columbia River Gorge and saw a ton of beautiful waterfalls such as Multnomah Falls which Wiki says is over 600 foot tall and we saw many other falls such as Bridal Veil and Latlaural falls and many beautiful hikes to all of those falls. We saw a Lavender farm and we saw the beautiful Rose Garden - Portland is known as the city of roses.

I hope no one is offended about what I’m about to say about the great state of Oregon but I found it to be a state of fantastic beauty right beside tragic ugly. Some things were “awfully pretty” (oxymoron?) and some things were “pretty ugly” (oxymoron?) if you know what I mean.

We had brought with us care packages to take to the homeless and handed out some while we were there. These care packages had things like a granola bar, some tuna, cheese crackers, bottled water, a pocket bible, a tract, a $5 McDonald’s gift card, and a few other small things in a big gallon sized ziplock bag. So some food for the body and food for the spirit and hopefully the packages will make some small difference. We noticed that in some of the parks there were a lot of homeless around, but also we noticed that there were church groups handing out free bibles and other things to try and help them. That was awesome, inspiring, and encouraging! Our hotel for the first night was in the city of Gresham which is a suburb of Portland like Garland is to Dallas. While there, we noticed they had fireworks stands in the Kroger parking lot. I went in and talked to some of the people there as it was early and no one else was around. They told me the people are allowed to shoot off fireworks in Gresham even right there in the parking lot. That was strange for me since that’s not allowed here. Also, they told me they were part of a church and the fireworks sales was to raise money to help the homeless and do good in the community. I was happy to hear that.

So there were really sad things to see, and also really hopeful and inspiring things to see! On the one hand it seemed so pretty that surely it was God’s country, and then other times it seemed so godless that it must be Satan’s country. I really didn’t always know what to make of Oregon, to love it or hate it. For the most part Oregon was a wonderful sightseeing trip but also sobering things to see where Oregon could use a bit of work, but encouraging things too that God was working thru His people there!

Really, tho, probably if someone from Oregon came here to Texas or Garland, they likely might say the same things about us, I’m supposing. It’s easy to look at others and point out everything wrong with them and not see the things wrong with ourselves or things of need in our area. We sort of become blind by what’s around us. But by nature we are fault finders in others. We see the faults in others but rarely see the faults with ourselves. But sometimes we see the good too and that’s really what we should focus on.

Matthew 7:3-5

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

We are going to look at the story of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10. It is a great lesson told by Jesus himself to illustrate how we as God’s children should be. We will see one of our higher callings that Jesus expects of us!

Luke 10:25-37 The good Samaritan

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”