HOPE

The other day I was reading the news when I saw a title that caught my eye: "Woman falls into path of oncoming train." My curiosity piqued, I watched--and was mesmerized.

I thought it was a nice story, and it was nice to find it in the headlines of CNN. A coincidence, right?

Of course, I think not. They're headlining miracles! The liberal news source is headlining miracles. But not just any miracles. They're headlining Good Samaritan miracles. Did you see the other passengers save her life? And they didn't do it for a reward. They didn't do it to be seen or to have the pride. I mean, they were just acting instinctively. Just look at them frantically waving their arms!

I had the warm fuzzies but didn't think too much of it until I was watching French news (direct from France) when I saw it in their headlines. They spent a good minute or two showing the video and highlighting the results. And the woman was drunk. And we don't even know her name.

Last time I checked, the only thing I saw on the local news from another country was the announcement that there was another conflict in the Middle East--but in order to hit international news, it's got to be a big event. Our local coverage of the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall was just about as long as France's coverage is this woman's narrow escape from death. (It was Monday, by the way, and it changed the world 20 years ago, just in case you didn't notice.)

Why do we show these good stories? And how did that story make it to primetime news in all the way to France?

What is it that makes us--as a society--shun goodness in our news stories but seek desperately to flash it across our TV screens?

Is it a hint at something more? Like maybe the divine nature we each possess? We outwardly oppose virtue but find it a coincidence that some complete strangers saved a drunk woman's life?

I don't know about you, but I know there's something more that CNN won't find a report on anywhere. And that is the goodness of human beings. And it's not just cuz our mothers told us so, but because there's something more to our existence, to our being. As God's literal children, we're something more on the inside than the news will ever be able to help us understand.