Real Help

Real Help

Bible Blast: Read Luke 10:25-37

Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.

Luke 10:34

There was a time in United States history when it was actually legal to own people as slaves. Harriet Tubman was born as a slave in Maryland in 1820. She managed to escape from her owners and fled to the North where she could live freely. But instead of staying safely there, she sneaked back into the southern part of the country many times to help other slaves escape too.

She worked with something called the Underground Railroad, which wasn’t actually a railroad at all. It was a secret system created to get slaves away from their owners and to safe free places in the North. Harriet Tubman helped move slaves from safe place to safe place until they finally found freedom from the terrible life of slavery.

Harriet ended up helping more than three hundred slaves find freedom in the North.

Jesus once told a teaching story with a character who was a lot like Harriet Tubman. We just call this character “The Good Samaritan” because Jesus didn’t give him a regular name.

The Good Samaritan helped a man who was in bad shape. He had been badly beaten, robbed, stripped, and left on the side of the road to die. The Samaritan used his own wine, oil, and bandages to soothe the the man’s wounds; then he carried him on his donkey to an inn. He paid the innkeepers to take care of the man and promised to pay any extra costs that came up. As the parable goes, this Samaritan went out of his way to help a stranger—a stranger from Israel, which was a community Samaritans typically despised.

God wants us—like Harriet Tubman and the Good Samaritan—to help people because we love them, not just because we know them.

Girl Gab: Talk to your mom about slavery. How does it make you feel to know it used to be “normal” in the United States to have slaves? Pray that God would stop slavery all over the world.