Hear a Siren, Say a Prayer

Seek the welfare of the city…and pray to the Lord on its behalf…  Jeremiah 29:7

Of all the racket a city dweller like me has to put up with, sirens are probably the worst. Sirens are designed to be impossible to ignore, and though I’ve become pretty good at pushing them into the background, there are still times when an ambulance or fire truck sounds like it’s right in my living room.

That’s what happened last night. Several police cars decided to stop outside our apartment building, sirens bleating, right under our windows. The sirens woke Millie, who went into a barking frenzy that woke up my wife Julee, who shook me awake to tell me to make Millie quiet down. I lurched into the living room where Millie was barking at the window, her breath fogging up the glass.

“Shhh . . . hush!” I said, dragging her away. She got loose and resumed her barking vigil. Finally I pulled the blinds, and she stopped. All the while the sirens continued. My head started pounding. How would I ever get back to sleep? I peered through the slats in the blind. Nothing seemed amiss on the block.

A memory of my mother came back to me: Whenever she heard a siren, even a distant one, she stopped what she was doing and said a quick prayer. We’d tease her sometimes, telling her it was probably just a couple of police officers hurrying back from their lunch break. But I came to admire Mom’s Johnny-on-the-spot faith: Sirens mean people in distress, and people in distress need prayer.

The sirens had stopped by now, and Millie had unceremoniously taken my place in bed (she likes that nice warmed-up spot). I didn’t have the heart to remove her. Besides, I wasn’t going to get back to sleep now.  I would sit for a while waiting to hear another inevitable siren come through the night. And I knew what I would do.

Lord, my mother taught me well. The world is full of opportunities to pray.