Fire trucks with sirens blazing. Ambulances whizzing by. Woo-woos (police cars) racing ahead.
When our kids are really little, of course, it was a thrill to hear them say “woo woo” when a police car passed us or “fire truck” when they saw a fire truck.
New words. Attaching meaning. Community workers…oh, I loved having littles.
But as our kids grew up, we attached another important concept to emergency vehicles: someone was hurting somewhere and needed prayer.
So we taught our kids to always pray for the people in need when an emergency vehicle was off to save someone.
This little prayer taught them many things: (1) You are part of something bigger—a whole world that needs God and that needs you to think of them sometimes; (2) Prayer helps people; (3) Cry out to God in times of trouble.
Recently with the tragedy in Orlando, there have been memes with a Mr. Rogers’ quote floating around (like the one below).
Absolutely heart-warming and precious.
So I recommend we teach our kids two things when they see an emergency:
(1) Pray! Someone needs prayer, and you can be the one to pray for them.
(2) Look for the helpers! There are always helpers, and we should be grateful for them.
We often had our kids go up to “helpers” in public and tell them thank-you. They sometimes had writing projects to write notes of gratefulness to helpers. That would be an extension of these two things that would also be nice.
But with our grandkids, it will for sure be “pray” and “look for the helper”!
Especially in times of great distress and tragedy like we have just witnessed, prayer and helpers are vital. Telling our children these two things when they see emergencies is a great way to calm their hearts during troubled times.
