How To Respond In A Crisis
Real Comfort to People in Crisis
A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag’s side door!
He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, “What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That’s a new car, and that brick you threw is going to cost me a lot of money. Why’d you do it?”
The Brick & The Brother
The young boy was apologetic. “Please, mister. Please. I’m sorry but I didn’t know what else to do,” He pleaded, “I threw the brick because no one else would stop…”
With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car. “It’s my brother,” he said. “He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can’t lift him up.” Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, “Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He’s hurt and he’s too heavy for me.”
Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts.
A quick look told him everything was going to be okay.. “Thank you and may God bless you,” the grateful child told the stranger. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home. It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar.
The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message, “Don’t go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!”
In a crisis the boy chose to throw a brick.
Yet Another Crisis
Proverbs 24:10 states that ‘If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn’t much to you in the first place.’
We all look good when things are going our way. But what happens when ‘the wheels fall off’?
A while ago I was pulled aside by one of my clients, and he shared with me as to what was happening in the life of his family at the moment. For six weeks his wife had been in hospital for treatment of cancer of the esophagus. Unable to swallow, she has been fed intravenously for weeks. As a result he has had to turn away work and has had one of his other daughters assisting him in the office.
As I believe in the power of prayer, I offered to have my staff and I pray for her complete recovery, for which he was thankful to receive.
He shared that he and his wife also believed in the power of prayer and that many of his relatives didn’t. He went on to say how he couldn’t understand how people could ever live without faith.
6 Cylinders On Only 4
I responded, ‘It would be like driving a 6 cylinder car on only 4 cylinders’ to which he agreed.
Here was a man and his wife who I would say is thriving in a crisis, and I was challenged to never forget how grateful I should be for every day of good health that I experience.
My wife and I paused for a few moments this morning before I headed off to work and prayed a prayer of faith for his wife. We both know, having faced many a crisis throughout our years, that prayer to a loving God is not a waste of time or breath. He hears our faith-filled prayers and answers them. Not always in the way we think they should come, but always with our best interests at heart.
May I encourage you to approach every crisis with the mindset and the heart-set that in it you will learn, you will grow and you will thrive.
Throw a brick if you want, but why not toss up a prayer.
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