It's a parable, a short, simple story to teach lessons:
What real neighbors are and aren't;
Showing the right way to live through good deeds;
Hinting the way to eternal Life through spiritual affection and
Awareness of man's true nature as God's child,
Far from self-satisfaction, pride, and show.
Might it also be a parable about the traveler?
Not just an innocent man mercilessly mugged, abandoned.
But a lesson that God cares for those
Who love and trust Him understandingly:
Twice sheltered from those who
Might have forced care he long since had "traveled" beyond;
Care that unintentionally through material helping,
Or insensitivity and indifference, might have
Stripped him of his dignity as a child of God, robbed him of his destiny,
Abandoned him to blank defeat in a shell of matter.
But there was this sending of an angel:
One pouring forth such
Compassion, practical affection, response of support,
That he must have glimpsed the spiritual nature of man.
They were brothers long before they met at that awful place.
It's true: God cares for the shorn and lonely lamb—
Shelters, hides those who, like Paul, are little before His allness,
Yet, insistent on their spiritual selves.
Could it also be a prophecy of Gethsemane, Golgotha, and the tomb?
A tender pre-assurance of God's care in that awful place?
In his hour of greatest fear and agony, and
Mankind's most perilous hour through all of history,
Kept from the vinegar; not wholly forsaken, but cared for; then safely hidden, sheltered,
Hands and hearts pouring love to protect his prayer and
Help sustain God's will.
