Faith Venture

When you read about scary events, look for the helpers. There are always helpers.

Several people hare been writing about this quote from Mr. Rogers. He said his mother told him this when he was small.

It’s true. I bet everyone reading this has rushed to aid in a situation. I can recall some of mine–both when I helped and when I failed to act quickly enough because I failed to understand the situation.

There was an auto accident late at night. It was on the rural Interstate near home. I saw headlights going up and down weirdly. I stopped. As did the only other motorist that night. “Did you see what I did?” he asked.

I had no idea what I’d find as I ran across the median grass and across the other highway lanes. I had never witnessed a traffic accident. I had no training. A young woman had evidently lost control and the car flipped. Miraculously, she was completely uninjured. All she was focused on was finding her cat.

I stayed to calm her down while the other guy drove to a farmhouse we saw in the distance to call for help. I was no hero or anything else. It’s just the first impulse is to help.

Since I really don’t have time or interest to turn on CNN and watch endless repetition and mindless speculation, I miss some stories. In the Case of Boston, the stories of helpers and courage.

Humans do respond positively in a crisis.

But, as Teresinha pointed out about youth in Brazil, sometimes we don’t recognize the crisis. I’ve had training of various types since (sports first aid, first aid, CPR), but I’m no expert. I’ve since learned that first you need to recognize the situation or your training is worthless. There are a couple of times where I simply didn’t recognize the situation and failed to react. But I learn from that experience. Next time, I will know better.

We need to recognize the situations we have that maybe aren’t a single crisis, but rather a systemic crisis. Maybe more of us can point the helpers to situations before they get too destructive. Kind of like all the Christ-followers helping someone.

This entry was posted on April 18, 2013 at 6:42 am and is filed under Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.