I have an insatiable thirst for rescues.

 

A woman who responded to a goose honking for help, cut the tangled string on a tiny bird's legs. A man waded into the swift current to lift a newborn moose up to the shore who then wobbled back to her thousand pound mother. Firemen reached deeply into a drain to scoop up ducklings for their frantic mama. Then she led them to the river, and the clutch all followed without the slightest interest in disobeying.

 

In every video the mother was desperate for someone, even a dangerous and unpredictable human, to save her babies. She communicated in the only way she has to express the urgency. Even a calloused and preoccupied bystander can act with compassion, given the chance to be a hero. 

 

I love it. 

 

Even if it seems certain that the outcome will include reunion, the suspense pulls me in like a river and I must watch until the end. Then my shoulders drop and I exhale.

 

The momentum to protect one's babies runs deep. It has nothing to do with social standing or economics, when animals are concerned. Mothers are hard wired to care for their children. It is of course in the best interests of the continuation of a species. But what is the actual source?

 

God is love, including the tenacious kind that shows up in a grizzly whose cubs are being too curious about hikers. Stay away from the effect of that love. Human parents too can tap into the inexhaustible supply for the benefit of their own sons and daughters. I got lost in a stream of dad saves on You tube, when their instantaneous reaction averted disaster. Sometimes it happened so fast the child had no idea how close the brush with catastrophe really was. 

 

But what about the Source? Surely He is not too busy doling out allotments of maternal and paternal devotion to ducks and millennials to save some for His own kids. There have been moments when the whir of events around me were suggestive of lightning fast intervention. The time I almost hit a pedestrian in a parking lot. The interruption just before I made a critical remark. 

 

It is unacceptable to me to suppose that God is more attentive to calves and cubs than to His beloved. If only I can follow without the slightest interest in disobeying.