Luke 6 - Do good or you're doing evil

So, Jesus is about to heal on the Sabbath, he sees the Pharisees lying in wait and he realizes this is a teachable moment. He asks the rhetorical question, "which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or destroy it?" The obvious answer was that it was to save life, to do good.

Surely the Pharisees were looking for a third possible answer: do nothing. According to their practices, this was the right answer. Jesus doesn't present this possibility, because it is a false choice. When Jesus encountered the handicapped he was faced with a choice: do something or do nothing, do good or do evil, save life or destroy it.

Every day we are presented with these same choices. It is up to us to recognize them and act. Just this weekend Cassi and I were downtown at a marriage conference. We had been instructed to plan a date night and Cassi and I were headed to a fancy restaurant to celebrate our graduations, new jobs, engagement (we had been saving up). After walking around downtown, we had about 10 minutes until our reservation, so we headed toward the restaurant. Half a block from our destination we were approached by a homeless man asking for some food. I said, "Sorry" and walked by. Then I even made a joke to Cassi about changing our reservation to three. Granted, I was thinking about Cassi and our special evening together. But by being so focused on my idea of what our evening had to be like, I missed an opportunity to make a much more meaningful evening.

Would spending 15 minutes to take the guy to Arby's have ruined our evening? Nope. Would showing up 10 minutes late for our reservation have caused a problem? Maybe (this was a fancy restaurant). Would it have been the good thing to do instead of the evil thing? Absolutely.