Ashley Smith's America

We link to Peggy Noonan. You should read her every week, too. She's essential reading. Read this week's whole thing -- she quotes nearly without comment the entire transcript of Ashley Smith's statement to reporters after stopping Brian Nichols' killing spree. It is spontaneous, innocent, incandescent, real. Here's the money quote from Peggy's spare commentary that followed:

Is it a matter of happenstance, is it without meaning, that America was taken by this drama at Eastertide, in the days before Palm Sunday, when a wanted man rode by donkey to an appointment at Golgotha?

Is it an accident that a great but troubled country that yearns so to be good is given such instruction at this time?

Maybe we should be thinking: God loves all of us, every one of us most tenderly, even convicts, maybe especially convicts, who know what they are and hang their heads and one of whom, so long ago, looked up, and cried out to the man on the other cross, and received from him a promise of forgiveness and a promise that soon, very soon, they would stand together in a place without pain.

Maybe we should think: This is all quite a mystery, too big to be understood, too beautiful to be ignored.

I just feel like bowing to everyone, all the victims and all the survivors, the good judge, the good guards, the good woman, the reporters, all of whom became part of something big and without borders. The only lesson is love. I feel certain this is true.

Someone Christian, being Christian, stopped the madness.

He is risen. Indeed. He is risen.