bear with me

In recent days there’ve been a lot of bear buzz at the Berlin Zoo.
It’s to do with a cute and white four letter word: KNUT.

Knut is a polar bear born at the zoo on 5 December 2006.
He was raised by human hands because his mother had refused to nurse him and his brother, who later died.
The cutie, who’s now a 19-pounder, became a global sensation, after an animal activist had insisted that it be killed since its mother did not want it to live.
Raising it through humans, he claimed, is cruel.

Reminds me of the story in I Kings chapter three in the Bible about King Solomon, the wisest man on earth, and how he settled a dispute between two prostitutes.
The women gave birth to sons in the same house.
One of the babies, however, died, in the night; and the mother of the dead child claimed that her housemate’s son was hers.

After hearing their arguments, Solomon summoned for a sword.
“Cut the boy in two and give each woman half the baby,” he said to his men.
The mother of the living baby panicked, and begged the king to spare her son, and give him to the other woman.
That was when the king knew who the true mother was.

You see, the one who truly loved the child didn’t have to be right.
The animal activist, in fighting for his "child"--his cause for preservation of animals, etc., which are all good--was willing to sacrifice the cub.

Why? Because he had to be right.
He had missed the reason behind his mission.

Great stories--both this and the one from I Kings.

Timely reminder too for me:

that I should never forget the reason behind what I work hard in,

that it's easy to lose the human touch even when fighting for a GREAT cause,

that once in while, it's ok not to be right.