What Would I Do?
Max Woolley bailed out of his P-38 fighter at 18,000 feet. Wounded by ground fire on the way down, his descent seemed to take forever. His parachute was riddled by bullets and almost useless by the time he hit the ground hard near Charleroi, Belgium. In a dazed state, fully expecting to be captured, he was instead picked up by a Belgian family and taken to their home. Woolley stated later that during this time,
“Prayer was the greatest source of inspiration for me… It gave me strength, consolation, and a way to talk, to plead for help and life itself.”303 The Belgian family hid him from the Germans and gave him all the care that they could:
They sacrificed their safety and gave me the best they had to offer, a place to rest, food from their sparse pantry, wet towels to subdue the stifling heat from being crammed into an eighteen-inch high enclosure and to wipe the blood and infected pus that oozed from my wounds for almost two months.
I’ve often asked myself, ‘Could I befriend a bloody, dirty, wounded man whom I had never before seen, share my scant supply of food, jeopardize the safety and welfare of myself and my family?’304
Each of us would have to agonize over this question. What would I do? Looking at our “WWJD” (What would Jesus do?) bracelets, we know what we should do. Jesus answered the question emphatically while explaining the phrase “love your neighbor” to a legal expert. He told the story of the man who was robbed and beaten beside the road. He was passed by a priest and a Levite, both “religious” men, who did not stop. A Samaritan, even though considered a foreigner, did stop to render assistance. Even though we know that we should follow the example of the Samaritan, few of us would find the courage within ourselves to do what the Belgian family did in this story. There is only one source of such strength, and that is Jesus Christ himself. When we prayerfully ask, “What would Jesus do?” we can also expect him to give us the resources to do it.
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
—Luke 10:36–37