God Hears Every PrayerSample

What is Empathy?

In the story Kaylee Prays for the Children of the World, Kaylee comes across a photo of a boy in Turkey that lives in a tent made from a blanket. There has just been an earthquake there.

After breakfast, Kaylee wants to sit with God and think about the boy in Turkey. She takes the photo to her room and perches on the edge of her warm, soft bed, imagining the boy sitting inside his flimsy blanket tent.

“God, do you care about this boy?” she wonders.

Even though Kaylee does not know the boy from Turkey, she still feels for him when she reads about him in the newspaper. What do you think she is feeling? Have you ever tried to see the world through someone else’s eyes?

When we allow our hearts to listen to the stories of others and try to understand their feelings, that is called empathy. Kaylee has empathy for the boy in Turkey—she sees that he is hurting, and she wants to do something to help. God wants us to have hearts that care about what others are going through. God wants us to have empathy.

We can have empathy for the friends and family around us. Maybe you’ve seen a friend fall down and wanted to help them up, or maybe you have seen someone sitting alone at lunch and invited them to eat with you—but we also can have empathy for people we don’t know, just like Kaylee. We just need to make sure our hearts are ready to listen.

Prayer:

Dear God, thank you for giving us hearts that care about what others are going through. Help us to see those around us who are hurting and help us to have hearts that want to listen and understand.

Activity:

Words of Love

Use the illustration above to draw the picture Kaylee saw in the newspaper. Draw it in the center of your paper. Then, in all the space left around it, fill it with the things you pray for the boy in Turkey. It could be single words like, PEACE, LOVE, SAFETY, FAMILY, or more descriptive phrases like, A FLUFFY BLANKET, A DELICIOUS MEAL, or A WARM HUG.