Have you ever been helped by a complete stranger and didn’t even get his name? My experience is a striking parallel to the “Good Samaritan” narrative in the Bible.
I was a teacher employed at an international private school in Umm Al Quwain, United Arab Emirates. On this day, I had two hours free time between lessons and just wanted to quickly fetch something from home.
When I got back to the car, my Opel Cabriolet’s hazard flashed. I was stuck.
Even before I could ask, a gentleman in a dishdasha (traditional Arabic dress) approached me, took over and identified the problem: The coil ignition cable had arced (burned off).
The industrial area is on the remote other side of town, the merchants are mostly Indian and Pakistani. I would be lost in translation. They speak Arabic, Hindi and Urdu. No English at all.
My benefactor – a construction company owner – took me there in his car. For more than an hour he drove from shop to shop, rescheduled his meetings, searched on his mobile phone, bought us tea, climbed over second-hand parts laying across floor spaces and dirtied his hands looking for something compatible.
We got a Mercedes replacement for which he paid, picked up a technician who would fit it and drove us back to my car.
Fitting the replacement took less than 5 minutes. When I offered to pay, he replied: “No pay! Without a car you cannot go anywhere.”
I was totally flabbergasted. To me, this was God’s grace in action: free, completely undeserved. Unstuck
Would I ever be as gracious to a complete stranger?
Photo Credit: hiclipart.com_
Die Arabier was gestuur!
Dis ‘n feit!