It was a hot, dusty July day when I set out from my home in Oklahoma. I was supposed to be enlisting in the US Army, but a few short days prior, the recruiter had called and told me that the psychologist in Oklahoma City felt I had not fully dealt with my feelings regarding the death of my half brother 2 years earlier, and that I needed to wait awhile before enlisting. Not wanting to face my foster family with this quite embarrassing news (this was the first time in my life I had experienced failure in ANYTHING, and in the generation of my parents and their peers, EVERYONE got into the army.) I started up my car and headed out of town, planning to make the trip to Colorado Springs and work through the summer before heading off to Gunnison, Colorado, where I had been accepted to college.

I hadn't planned for the trip, and I was in southwest Kansas before my cash reserves ran out and my car ran out of gas. I gathered some of my belongings in my sleeping bag, and trudged on, hoping to hitchhike my way to Colorado Springs.

Throughout the remainder of the evening before I camped out on the roadside and the first hours of the morning, the few cars passing by the road passed me by without pause. As the heat of the day was approaching, a truck pulled up alongside me and offered me a ride. I rode in the back, the breeze sweetened by the smell of ripening wheat running through my hair.

We stopped at a town on the Kansas/Colorado border, and the gentlemen bought me breakfast. They said they were from Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, which was not near anything, and they couldn't give me a ride all the way to Colorado Springs, but they'd try to find someone who could. They eventually found some college kids headed to Limon, Colorado, gave me a few bucks to spend until I got to my destination and sent me along the way. But not until they had shared their faith.

They were Jehovah's Witnesses, they explained, and as we sat and talked, they explained some of the teachings of their faith.

It was not that long afterwards before I would consider the Jehovah's Witnesses a "cult", and much longer still before I would understand the lesson I should have learned that day.

When Jesus taught the parable of the "Good Samaritan", he was answering the question "who is my neighbour" in response to his commandment to "love your neighbour as yourself". By using the Samaritan, he was using the illustration of one of the most hated "cults" to orthodox Jews at the time. The Samaritans were considered unclean, vile, and most certainly, NOT Jews. And yet, in the words of Christ, he seems to make it clear that through the Samaritan's actions, he kept the two greatest commandments better than the Jews standing before Christ at the time.

I do not know what God will say to me when I stand before Him in judgement. But I DO know that he will have kind words for the two "Samaritans" who picked me up on my personal road to Damascus. And I know that I do not have the right to stand in judgement of these men, who briefly showed themselves to be more neighbours than the doubtless dozens of "Christians" who must have passed me by on that same road.