The helpers.

Her husband was in the final stages of liver failure and I was his nurse. She called me in the late afternoon to say, "My favorite nail lady is coming by the hospital to give my husband a manicure and pedicure. If you'd like, I'd love for you to sit for a pedicure, too. Just put it on my tab!" The thought was a silly and impossible one - receiving a pedicure in my scrubs, at work, in a hospital room - but the idea was generous.

I watched the manicurist from Viet Nam lovingly crouch over a jaundiced, dying man to make him feel more human. She probably never pictured herself in a hospital room with a client who could barely respond. But as I watched her going about her work with great compassion, a Mister Rogers quote came to mind. When Fred Rogers was a young boy and would witness a catastrophe in the movies or on the news, his mother would remind him,

"Always look for the helpers. There will always be helpers... If you look for the helpers, you will know that there's hope."

I'd love to add this: so often, the helpers aren't wearing badges or stethoscopes or a uniform of any kind. They're teachers who spend many more hours than are required of them to teach kids to read. They're ladies enjoying retirement who pass their days knitting hats for NICU babies. They're nursery workers at church who allow moms to enjoy an uninterrupted hour to hear the Word. They're truck drivers who buy an extra lunch for the man who calls an underpass his home.

Always look for the helpers. They often go unnoticed, but if you look, you'll find them everywhere. In the saddest and loneliest and darkest places, they'll be there bearing the light.