Harambe

On our first family outing after our daughter Anna was born in 2007… we went to the Cincinnati Zoo.

These pictures were taken that day at the same zoo and the same exhibit where Harambe was shot on Saturday.

You can see from my pictures that little boys like gorillas.

My husband and I had our hands full that day with a nursing newborn, an energetic toddler, and a child who had started kindergarten only weeks earlier.  But exhausted though we were, we wanted to take our boys (3 and 5) to see the animals at the zoo.  Because that’s what you do when you have little ones.

I didn’t lose any of my children that day at the Cincinnati Zoo.  But on other occasions I did:  in a store, and on a fishing pier at the ocean.  Once when I turned my head for just a moment, my son fell backwards out of a shopping cart and landed on his head.   There have been times when my children could have been seriously injured or killed but for the grace of God.

Those incidents happened not because I don’t love my children or because I am negligent.  They happened because I am a parent who has done the best I can…especially during those early years when there was more than one child and only one me.  The mother of the boy who ended-up in that gorilla exhibit Monday never intended to instigate a debate over which is more valuable: the life of a child or the life of an endangered animal.  She never fathomed when she bought those tickets Saturday morning she would have to hire a P.R. firm to speak for her family, have police do an investigation of her home, field death threats, or fight a petition to send her to prison.  Like me, she just wanted to take her little ones to the zoo to see the animals.

Some of the comments about this event have been unfathomable.  Even though every zoo has concurred with Cincinnati’s actions to shoot the gorilla, countless folks on-line have remarked that ‘if the boy wandered into the exhibit he should have been allowed to die.’  One commenter actually wrote, “The gorilla was endangered, the boy was not. They should have shot the boy.” 

Romans 1:25 says, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.”  God’s wrath must be coming for America, because we obviously love what has been created…such as animals…much more than we love God and His priorities.  After all, over 2,000 innocent American babies were aborted on Saturday, as well.  But there is no petition circulating, no outraged comments on-line, and no demand for justice about their deaths.

Please join me for praying for the little boy and his family who had that accident on Monday, and join me in thanking God for sparing his life.  And please join me for praying for America.  Even so Lord Jesus, come quickly.

-Kara