I killed Bambi

Oh, the perils of country living.

Many of you know I live in a small town in New Hampshire. In a month or so, the scenery will knock your socks off. Believers will marvel at God’s creation, while unbelievers will be left without excuse.

Today, however, I had an unpleasant country-life experience. About 6:30, on the way to a men’s bible study, I killed Bambi.

Actually, it’s worse: I maimed Bambi.

I was just be-bopping down the road in my orange Honda Element, listening to demonic classic rock, when I heard a strange ka-thunk. Looking in the mirror, I saw a sickening sight: a fawn struggling to get up, and then pitifully limping into the woods, accompanied by its mother.

I’m not sure what happened—the best I can tell is that the poor animal ran into the back of my car and probably got its foot caught under the wheel.

I’m just heart-broken. The life-long rural types that I meet with dismissed it as a routine life-in-the-country occurrence. But to this guy who grew up in the inner-city—it nearly brought me to tears—thinking about that wounded fawn and with virtually no chance of survival.

And of course it made me ask that impertinent question: Why God?

Or is it impertinent? Certainly it can be—when asked from the premise that you know better than God. But when asked out of unadulterated sorrow about how the things which God ordains somehow and necessarily involve suffering—well then I think “Why God?” can be a purely honest and very human question—one for which I hope God is sympathetic.