A lot of us grew up with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. As I was sitting in worship last Sunday, this parable was shared with me again. Only this time my heart went somewhere new, somewhere I wasn’t expecting.

The story, for those who don’t know it or need a refresher, is about a traveler who has been attacked, beaten and left half-dead on the side of the road. The first two people to pass by after the attack avoid the traveler, offering no help. The third passer-by, a Samaritan, stops and helps the injured traveler.

When we hear this story, we all want to imagine ourselves as the Samaritan who acts with kindness, compassion and love to help someone in need.

Now, I am not here to rehash where each of us aligns with that in our current reality, but rather to offer a different perspective on who the victim left on the side of the road might be. For as much as I was trying to pay attention to my minister retelling the story, my mind moved elsewhere.

I was thinking about her–our neglected, hurting, often sacrificed and pushed to the side Mother Earth.

Now, we all know she needs help–she’s been crying out for it for decades. We all see the sickness, the pain of her wounds, but we avoid looking directly at them until they show up on our doorstep in the form of hurricanes, drought and famine.

We want to be a Good Samaritan for her, yet more often than not, we are the good people who keep on keeping on.

I get it. I really do.

It’s hard to buy less in a society that screams for us to consume more.We buy green when we can…but it’s expensive.We support local farmers and buy organic. Yet we have also waste a lot of food in our homes.We recycle! But the trash bin still fills up twice as fast as the recycling bin.It’s honestly just more comfortable living in a constant 72 degree interior temperature.It’s easier to get in the car and go before plotting where and how and what we actually need to get out for.We want to be the parents that provide for our kids…even when they don’t actually need all that stuff.It’s overwhelming all the changes we need to make to live better for her.

I told you, I get it. I would bet a lot of us don't know how to best help Mother Earth. And so we don’t do much of anything.

In the parable, we don’t know what the Good Samaritan was thinking. But my guess is they didn’t have all the answers for how to help either. They just knew this person needed help.

And so they acted. They bandaged what wounds they could on the spot. And then the Good Samaritan took the injured traveler to someone else who could also help. They used compassion as their guide, finding what help they could for the traveler even when it was beyond their knowledge and capabilities.

When I was in the 4th grade, our class play was about saving the Earth. I don’t remember all of the details, except I remember wearing blue shirts with the Earth of them and singing songs about the ozone layer and recycling and what we could do together to save Mother Earth. It seemed so easy in song.

Yet here we are 30 years later. On the whole we are still choosing to keep on walking toward comfort and consumerism and convenience when confronted with an injured and dying Mother Earth.

My family has been trying to be Mother Earth’s Good Samaritan lately. We recycle as much as we can, we compost our food waste and collect rainwater for our garden. Our heat is set at 62 degrees and our AC at 78. We spent the last year on a no-spend journey to curb our consumerism and be more intentional with how we interact with Mother Earth and her resources. Hell, we even canceled Amazon Prime.

It doesn’t feel like enough. And it’s still overwhelming. And hard. It’s really hard.

We all want to be the Good Samaritan. We don’t want to identify with people who keep going about their business, ignoring the hurt traveler at the side of the road. We don’t want to be indifferent.

The remedy to indifference is action. We must choose to be the Good Samaritan, to help where we can and get others to help when we don’t know what to do next. We must use our voice to bring justice and healing to the injustice and hurt of the world. Literally.

If you want to be a Good Samaritan to Mother Earth but don’t know where to start, I can help. Part of my passion is sustainability and so part of my coaching is around helping others live more sustainably.

As a coach, I want to be that safe, non-judgmental space where you can explore how you want to show up in and for the world. I can go on this journey with you, because I’m already on it for myself. I’m already here, learning and growing and hoping to be a Good Samaritan for Mother Earth.

Every journey begins by taking a first step. Take yours and book a call to talk about how you can be a Good Samaritan to Mother Earth. Book here.