I read the news today (oh, boy).
And for once, I was inspired.
And it wasn't just the polls showing that people were coming around to realize that Bush lied about the war, and that Schwarzenegger's latest power-grab is nothing short of a multi-million dollar PR stunt.
(more below)
It was not just the guilty verdicts in the trial of the Klansman behind the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers investigating a destroyed church (manslaughter may not be accurate, but it certainly is an improvement over what Killen had been receiving for over 30 years).
In part, the optimism I feel today comes from those stories, but that is optimism that only fuels my faith in American democracy. But one thing I've seen today has renewed my faith in a compassionate and loving God:
A pride of lions in Ethiopia saved a kidnapped 12 year old from a lifetime sentence in a forced marriage.
(http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/06/21/ethiopia.lions.ap/index.html)
Forced marriage is one of those enduring customs that embarrass me as a man. Any form of spousal abuse is an embarrassment to the species, but kidnapping preteen girls to rape and beat until they cease resisting is way, WAY beyond the Pale.
(From the article: "The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where the majority of the country's 71 million people live.")
So when I hear that man-eating lions (of all creatures!) intervened in an atrocity, repelled the culprits and protected the innocent and terrified victim, I feel like crying at the divine beauty of such a miracle.
The best guess that experts in Ethiopia have as to why the lions behaved as they did is that, "A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they (the lions) didn't eat her."
The crying of a beaten child brought the lions of Ethiopia themselves to act. Tell me this isn't a miracle. Tell me this isn't a parable.
Tell me I didn't just find proof of God on the AP Wire.