Christ the Servant

10/05/2026

The world's most loved bear was Canadian, and she was named after Winnipeg 🇨🇦🐻

August 24, 1914. A troop train stops at White River, Ontario.

On the platform, a trapper is selling a tiny black bear cub. He had killed her mother. She has no one.

Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, a young veterinarian who had made Winnipeg his home, is on his way to war. He steps off the train, looks at her, reaches into his pocket, and hands over $20.

In his diary that day, he writes three words:

"Bought bear $20."

He names her Winnipeg, after the city he calls home. The soldiers just call her Winnie.

She crosses the Atlantic with the Canadian troops and becomes their mascot on Salisbury Plain in England, a little piece of home for men about to walk into the worst war the world had ever seen.

Then the orders come. France. The front lines.

Harry cannot take her into the trenches. So in December 1914 he takes her to the London Zoo, planning to come back for her when the war is over.

He survives the war. He does come back.

But by then Winnie is the most adored animal in London. She is so gentle that children are allowed to feed her by hand. Harry sees how loved she is, and he makes the hardest choice. In 1919, he gives her to the zoo for good and sails home to Winnipeg without her.

One of the children who visits her is a little boy named Christopher Robin Milne. He loves her so much that he renames his own teddy bear after her.

His father, A.A. Milne, starts writing stories about that bear.

In 1926, the world meets Winnie-the-Pooh.

Winnie lived at the London Zoo until 1934. Harry went back to his veterinary practice in Winnipeg and died in 1947. He never became rich or famous from any of it.

But today there are statues of him and his bear in Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg and at the London Zoo, and White River, Ontario still honours the cub who was bought on its train platform.

One small act of kindness from a Canadian soldier, on his way to war, gave the whole world a friend.

Did you know Winnie was Canadian? ❤️

10/04/2026

For decades, Sudan lived quietly at a zoo in the Czech Republic.

He was a northern white rhinoceros — a massive, gentle animal belonging to a subspecies that once roamed across parts of central and eastern Africa.

But by the time Sudan reached the final years of his life, his world had become almost impossibly small.

His subspecies had been devastated by poaching and habitat loss. The northern white rhino population had collapsed, and by 2008, the subspecies was considered extinct in the wild.

In 2009, Sudan was moved to Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy along with three other northern white rhinos — an extraordinary last-ditch attempt to give the animals a chance to reproduce.

It didn’t work.

And eventually, Sudan became something no conservationist ever wanted to see:

the last male northern white rhino on Earth.

He was 45 years old when his health began to fail in March 2018. His muscles and bones had deteriorated, he struggled to stand, and veterinarians determined that euthanasia was the most humane option.

On March 19, 2018, Sudan died.

The world had lost the last male of his kind.

But there is something about the photographs taken during Sudan’s final days that makes this story especially heartbreaking.

He wasn’t alone.

The people who had cared for him were there.

Rangers and keepers who had spent years protecting him stood beside him, comforting him as he approached the end of his life. Photographer Ami Vitale, who had followed the northern white rhinos for years, documented that extraordinary relationship between the animals and the people who refused to give up on them.

And when Sudan died, only two northern white rhinos remained.

Both were female.

His daughter, Najin, and his granddaughter, Fatu.

For most species, that would have been the end of the story.

But scientists weren’t ready to accept that.

Sudan’s genetic material had been preserved, and researchers began pursuing something that would have sounded like science fiction just a few years earlier: using stored s***m, eggs collected from Najin and Fatu, laboratory fertilization and surrogate southern white rhinos to try to produce northern white offspring.

The goal wasn’t simply to clone Sudan.

It was to preserve enough of the northern white rhino’s genetic diversity to potentially rebuild a population.

And remarkably, that work is still happening today.

As of April 2026, scientists had produced 39 pure northern white rhino embryos. Several embryo-transfer attempts have been made using southern white rhino surrogates, although none had yet resulted in a long-term pregnancy. Scientists continue refining the process.

So when you look at a photograph of Sudan, you’re not just looking at an animal.

You’re looking at the end of an era.

And perhaps, if the scientists succeed, the beginning of another one.

A creature that was once surrounded by thousands of others was reduced to one final male.

His death was heartbreaking.

But the people who cared for him refused to let his death become the end of his species’ story.

Sometimes conservation isn’t about saving an animal in time.

Sometimes it’s about refusing to give up after time has already run out.

And somewhere in a laboratory, scientists are still working with the tiny pieces of Sudan’s legacy, hoping that one day, a northern white rhino calf will take its first breath.

If that happens, Sudan won’t come back.

But a part of what he represented might.

And perhaps that is why his story still matters. 🦏❤️

01/02/2026

When troubles assail me, O Lord, I will cling to the promise of your faithful presence.

01/01/2026

Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored. May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as in heaven. May this continue to be our prayer in the new year, and may we find fellowship with one another in what is eternal and holy. Bless us on our way. Bless us on our earthly pilgrimage so that we may remain free from all bo***ge, able to thank you day and night for all the good you do, even when things look very dark. We praise your name and we pray as the Savior has taught us. Amen.

12/05/2025

09/24/2025

Beloved God, supplement our sense of belonging to one another. Guide us to recognize our struggles are intertwined.

09/15/2025

Political violence has no place in a democracy; neither does religious nationalism

08/05/2025

Voice of the day
God does not ask anything of you other than you go out of yourself according to your mode as creature and that you let God be God in you.
- Meister Eckhart

Prayer of the day
God, help us step outside ourselves in humility, so that you may work freely within us, willing and acting through us for your good pleasure.

06/11/2025

God has gifted us with imagination. May we apply our creativity for the good of the world.