His briefcase and suitcase were in the backseat. Lying in the passenger bucket was a Bible (King James version; Doug would have no other). Doug was one of four lay preachers at the Church of the Holy Redeemer, and when it was his turn to preach, he liked to call his Bible “the ultimate insurance manual.”

Doug had taken Jesus Christ as his personal savior after ten years of drinking that spanned his late teens and most of his twenties. This decadelong spree ended with a wrecked car and thirty days in the Penobscot County Jail. He had gotten down on his knees in that smelly, coffin-sized cell on his first night there, and he’d gotten down on them every night since.

“Help me get better,” he had prayed that first time, and every time since. It was a simple prayer that had been answered first twofold, then tenfold, then a hundredfold. He thought that, in another few years, he would be up to a thousandfold. And the best thing? Heaven was waiting at the end of it all.

His Bible was well-thumbed, because he read it every day. He loved all the stories in it, but the one he loved the best — the one he meditated on most often — was the parable of the Good Samaritan. He had preached on that passage from the Gospel of Luke several times, and the Redeemer congregation had always been generous with their praise afterward, God bless them.

Doug supposed it was because the story was so personal to him. A priest had passed by the robbed and beaten traveler lying at the side of the road; so had a Levite. Then who comes along? A nasty, Jew-hating Samaritan. But that’s the one who helps, nasty Jew-hater or not. He cleanses the traveler’s cuts and scrapes, then binds them up. He loads the traveler on his donkey, and fronts him a room at the nearest inn.