The Good Samaratin with Toddlers

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There was a lawyer that came to Jesus asking what he needed to do to have eternal life. Jesus told him the simple answer, to love God and love others. But the lawyer continued to question him. Luke 10:29 says”But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

That is when Jesus told the story of the good Samaratin.

We didn’t do anything too fancy for this devotion. We simply read the story of the good Samaritan in our Storybook Bible, and then colored a coloring page from Color and Kindness, and read Little Blue Truck.

Little Blue Truck?

If you haven’t read Little Blue Truck, this story is about a friendly little truck, who says hello to all the neighboring farm animals. They are friends. They all get along.

Then all of a sudden, this great big dump truck comes in. He roars through the neighborhood, with no time for anyone. To be honest, he’s a big jerk. Well, wouldn’t you know he gets stuck in some mud and can’t get out. All the animals ignore him. He was a big fat jerk, after all. Who could blame them?

But not Little Blue Truck! He comes to the rescue. He doesn’t ignore the call for help. And in the end he is the one that saves the big dump truck.

I won’t ruin all the details for you, but that’s a debrief.

So what’s that have to do with the Bible?

If you’re still a bit lost, let me give you some context to the story of the Good Samaratin. In the time of Jesus, the Jewish people hated Samaratins. It was so bad that if they had to go some place on the other side of Samaria, they would go around Samaria, as opposed to going through it. They were jerks. They created racial and religious barriers that made the Samaratin the other.

So when Jesus exalted the Samaratin as the good neighbor, can you imagine the surprise? If he would have just had another Jewish person save the day, it would have again shown the corruption of the religious leaders of the day. Instead, he used a Samaratin and showed that we are not called to just love the people who look like us, act like us, and believe like us. We are called to love ALL people.

Little Blue Truck shows my kids that we need to love people and help one another out, even when we don’t see eye to eye. We need to rally our communities to love those who we’re tempted to call our enemies.

You’re My Neighbor

Reading stories, and playing games can only go so far to show the truth behind this story. The way our little ones are really going to see this played out is from us. Are we going to do it perfect? Nope. But we have to be humble and start. Let’s get out there and sit with our neighbors that mourn. Even those that are racially and/or religiously different than us. Let’s listen. Let’s have empathy. Let’s love. And let’s let our little ones watch.