Just a turtle on the road

As a kid, my grandmother would always stop and let my cousin and me move turtles that were on the road into the ditch. The other day we passed a red eared slider that was in the middle of a busy road, so we stopped and helped it cross the road to the ditch.  It brought back a lot of fun memories of when I was a kid and our kids got a kick out of it. 

There were some questions as my family watched from the car as I carried the kicking little guy across the road but not to the ditch that it was closest to. "Why is he taking it to that side, maybe because there is water in the ditch on that side, no there is water on this side too".  So why did I put the turtle in the ditch it was further away from? The simple answer is, I just moved it in the direction it was headed. It was headed east across the road, so I moved it to the ditch on the east side of the road. I could have moved it to the ditch it just came from, but I thought it might just try to cross the road again. Maybe I was over thinking it, but it seemed logical to me. Hopefully, I helped this little guy or little grandpa, remember they can live up to 70 years, get where he was going for the day. Maybe not, he may have just turned around 3/4 way across the road to see where he had come from. Maybe I helped him go further faster or may have just created a big setback for him. I don't know.


I do know that we all have more in common with this little turtle than we may think.  When we need help on the road of life, some people stop to help us, others look and keep going, and some run us over. We have all been helped and hurt at times, but most of the time I believe we just get overlooked and we too overlook others in our path. Whether it is someone that is obviously in need or a person that is just struggling a bit, most of us tend to just keep going and not stop. For whatever reason, maybe a really good reason, we don't want to get involved.  Everyone is so private and we don't want to go butting into people's business, or at least that is what we tell ourselves. Or we might just be too busy with our own problems and struggles to notice other people's problems. Maybe you do notice but you just don't feel safe stepping into other people's problems, because you know some people prey on those that stop to give a hand. That is a legitimate concern because we live in a world where evil does exist. There is a risk so we should be careful. So who should we help and who should we just pass by and look at? Obviously, the circumstances have a lot to do with the answer to this question but who should we even consider helping? Why does it matter if we help at all, someone else will help any way it is not my problem. 


These questions remind me of a story from the bible. If you are a bible person then you have to listen to my bible story, it is an unwritten rule. 

Unwritten Rule # 365 MUST LISTEN TO RANDOM PEOPLES' BIBLE STORY. 

If you are not a bible person, you have read this much so you might as well hear me out. I will make it short and entertaining...well maybe entertaining. 

So for the bible story, one day Jesus was being questioned by a group of very smart people. These guys were Lawyers or experts in the Mosaic Law and they questioned Jesus a lot... it was kinda their thing. They would follow Jesus around and try to ask him hard questions but for good reason, he was claiming to be God!  Today I guess we would call them trolls because they just tried to start arguments or upset people by starting off-topic conversations. 

So these guys are trolling Jesus and one of them asks, "Hey Jesus so how does a person get to heaven?"  Jesus is like "Well you are the lawyer, what does the law say big boy?"  Yes, I think Jesus called people "big boy" on occasion. 

The lawyer replies with a word for word quote from the Mosaic Law that basically said "Love God and Love your neighbor". Jesus then tells the crowd and the lawyer "that is correct" but then goes on to talk about how this type of love is more than just an emotion or even a "second-hand emotion" of you are Tina Turner.  The love talked about here makes you take action, Jesus was telling the troll to "practice what he preached."

It is at this point the trolling lawyer starts to get worried because now Jesus is getting personal. See to the lawyers getting to heaven was all about knowing the right things and they had a position in society where they did not have to do the right thing. Jesus had hit a nerve so the lawyer then starts looking for a loophole with the  " Jesus who is my neighbor, well what does 'neighbor' really mean, Jesus I only have to Love the people that look like me...other Jewish people, technically who is my neighbor, see Jesus if I move to my family farm I don't have any neighbors so all I have to do is love God!" 

Jesus then takes the opportunity to tell everyone a story to explain who our neighbors are. And in turn, who they and we should be loving aka helping, remember love = action....love ≠ second-hand emotion. 

The story Jesus tells is often referred to as the "The Parable of the Good Samaritan" if you grew up in church or even if you did not you have most likely heard the term "Good Samaritan"...well this is where the term came from. The short version of the story goes like this.

A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and he is robbed. The robbers took everything he had, including his clothing, and beat the man to within an inch of his life. This guy was in bad shape, to say the least. So here is this guy naked and dying on the side of the road and along comes a Priest. A Priest was at the top of the Jewish social chain. Surely the Priest stopped to help the man, the man was dying! Nope, he did not stop, not only did he not stop to help but he moved to the other side of the road to pass the man. He did not want to get any of that naked man's blood on his shoes. Was the Priest too busy, or too important to get mixed up in this poor man's problems? For whatever reason, the Priest became a "look and keep going" kinda guy that day.

Then Jesus says another person comes down the road and sees the naked bleeding man in the road. This guy was a Levite and they were Jewish people that because of their lineage were very respected in this culture.  A Levite's job, if they were not a Priest, would be to work somewhere in the temple. So does the Levite stop, nope. Both of these men had the Mosaic Law memorized, which included the whole love your neighbor thing. 

Jesus then gets every Jewish person's undivided attention who is standing there by saying this one statement, "But then a Samaritan came by..." See there was a lot of racial and religious tension between the Samaritans and the Jewish people. So when Jesus used a Samaritan in his story everyone there leaned in a little closer. Jesus continues with the story. The Samaritan stopped and helped the injured man. We do not know if the injured man was a Jew, but what we do know is that the "Good Samaritan" did not consider the injured man's race or religion. The Samaritan saw his neighbor as anyone who was in need. 

Jesus then asked the lawyer a simple question, "So which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man that was robbed and beaten."

The Lawyer replied, "The one that showed mercy."

Jesus turns to the crowd and says, "Go and do likewise" and drops the mic! I think Jesus would have been a mic dropper and that was a mic drop moment. 

So bible people, Christians, followers of Jesus, what if we got this one thing right? What if we were quick to help our "neighbors" instead of debating over who our neighbors are? What if we stop being the "look and keep going" person leaving Walmart. Or the "someone else will help" person driving down the road.  We are not talking about working for a ticket to heaven.  Jesus was not teaching "if you do enough good actions you will make it to heaven", but rather a person that has a new life in Jesus (John Chapter 3) will exhibit these two things in their life. 

Non-bible people, non-Christian, and "I don't care" people if you are still reading, you don't have to follow anything the bible says. It is all optional for you, but I want you to know what a person following Jesus is supposed to be doing. They are supposed to be loving God and loving you. 

If you want to see our video of the turtle on the road, you can view by clicking here .