As I watched the news yesterday with the rest of the country, I shocked but not shocked, stunned but not surprised. We’ve watched these stories play out too many times, have prayed for countless victims and their families whenever there has been an attack or disaster. But always, always, there is one part of these sad stories that stands out as beautiful.

In the video of the first explosion in Boston, you see a puff of smoke erupt, then chaos as people scatter in all directions away from the blast — except for a few people. A handful of police officers strapped into reflective lime green vests run toward the sidewalk where the bomb went off. As everyone else runs away to safety, they run toward danger to help. Almost reflexively, they go where they are  needed, and they go quickly. They don’t  stand in the street calculating the risks to themselves.

Think about this. We aren’t faced with this types of terrible, dangerous situation every day; most of us will never personally experience anything like this. Tragedies on this scale are, for the majority of the population, terribly sad stories we watch on the news — but other people’s real-life problems. But we all encounter other people’s real-life problems every single day. They’re not often this dire. Which is all the more reason that, when we see people in need, we should, like those police officers, run toward them to help, not sit back and calculate the inconvenience to ourselves.

As I watched the news video yesterday, I felt waves of sadness, but also a swelling of admiration for those officers whose first reaction was to help.

We should all want to be like that in our everyday lives — people who have an innate help reflex.
~ Laura