Loving Today's Samaritans

You are growing up in a world that has seen the level of technology increase unlike any other generation and your ability to connect with the rest of the world was unfathomable for your parents and grandparents generations. This can be an issue for your generation as you will intermingle with more people of more diverse ethnic backgrounds, colors, tribes and races than ever before.

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you represent Jesus as an ambassador (representative) of His. He clearly stated in John 13:34-35, that the way to tell that you are a representative or disciple of His is by the way you love people; how you treat them, care for them, respect them. Thankfully Jesus gave us awesome pictures of how to treat people who are not like us, people who we can quickly become prejudiced against and begin to hate what they represent.

On His way back home one time, Jesus decided to take the direct route home instead of going around Samaria (John 4:4-42). Samaria was where Samaritans lived and the Jews, of whom Jesus was one, hated them with a great passion. Samaritans were considered the lowest form of life according to the Jews and any Jew worthy of being a Jew was not caught dead doing anything with a Samaritan.

While Jesus had the apostles completing an errand, He began a conversation with a Samaritan woman. Now that was doubly bad as a good Jew did not converse with a Samaritan and secondly, a good Jew did not speak to a woman in pu ...