“Look For The Helpers”
As I walk on the treadmill at Planet Fitness, I’m keeping an eye on the two news stations playing side by side on big screens. I’m taking in the polarized news, trying to find truth and honesty somewhere in the middle. One thing I witness on both screens are the helpers. Men in yellow vests rush to the scene of a bombsite and community members scramble to pull their neighbors out from under concrete debris.
The helpers are the true boots on the ground. They hurry to the sites where bombs have fallen and claw through the rubble to search for the living and the dead. They stay to battle raging fires. Medical personnel apply tourniquets and bandage wounds while civilians disregard their own fear and safety to help at the scene of a tragedy.
Many years ago, a mother named Nancy Rogers reassured her little boy, as he worried about trouble in the news, that he should, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” Just a mother’s advice to a sensitive boy named Fred, who cared about the suffering of others. “Stay positive,” she would say, “There will be people who will try to make things better.”
We need this simple message today, “Look for the helpers,” because things in the Middle East are looking grim. Fear, anxiety, and hopelessness, we all feel it. But by showing goodness in society, we are exhibiting true strength. Whenever there would be a catastrophe in the movies or in the news, “Show rescue teams,” Fred Rogers urged, “show medical professionals anywhere there is a tragedy. Show the helpers, because where there is help, there is hope.”
Thank you, Mr. Rogers and your mother for the reminder. We need hope. Our world needs hope. Imagine how brave the helpers are and how exhausted they must be. It’s easy to push a button from behind a desk and watch the missile drop on a big screen, but it’s another thing to rush to the site and be the helper. I hope you will join me in praying for the helpers in the Middle East affected by these horrific times.
What makes us good humans is empathy, care, kindness, self-sacrifice, and willingness to lay down our life for another. That’s true heroism. That is action in the face of fear. In the midst of the inhumanity we are witnessing, let’s keep looking for humanity. It will keep hope alive, a hope that some part of society has not gone completely crazy and that there still remains hope that goodness will prevail.
The Facts newspaper, Brazos Living March 11, 2026
