Let’s continue toward finding “Real Life and Real Love” with the help of the classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit. If you remember, The Skin Horse warned The Rabbit that by the time you are Real, you’re looking pretty shabby. But Rabbit was loved … and in love … and nothing else mattered [until it did]:
"...the little Rabbit was very happy so happy that he never noticed how his beautiful velveteen fur was getting shabbier ... his tail was coming unsewn, and the pink rubbed off his nose [from kisses]."
Love is elusive, and the sweet spot of hearing and feeling love can be addictive. That’s because we are made in the image of God — made to love and be loved. The problem comes in when our first love fails to be all our hopes made it out to be. Only God is truly love. Throughout Scripture God reminds us of this … and it is why the very first commandment is:
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Exodus 20:3
It is not that God fears competition – He knows that if we love anyone or anything more than Him, we will suffer pain. HE is the source of love and eternal life:
“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17:3
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:8
The happiness of the Rabbit is like human happiness when it seems our dreams have come true. But truth at its core is love — and there is only One who is wholly true. Anything we prefer above God Himself is an empty idol — and an idol is nothing more than a lie that crumbles and destroys all who love(d) it.
The destruction of an idol is horrifically painful. God allows the destruction to happen gradually sometimes — He gently reveals truth if you’re willing to receive it. Our little Velveteen Rabbit glimpsed truth he couldn’t grasp one dusky evening. Lying alone in a field where his beloved boy had left him, he saw two furry creatures like himself — but not exactly. Although he felt really real because of the boy’s love, the movements of the other bunnies — and then their taunts as he ‘refused’ to join them — brought questions to his heart.
“I am Real!” said the little Rabbit. “I am Real! The Boy said so!” And he nearly began to cry.
Soon the Boy took the Rabbit back to his room, and his comfortable illusion of real quieted his heart until scarlet fever shook his world. The storybook portrayal of the Scriptural truth in Hebrews 12:27 — everything that can be shaken will be shaken — captures the heart of our own earth-shaking moments. Declared ‘unclean’ (“a mass of scarlet fever germs”) by the doctor, the Rabbit was consigned to a bag of toys that must be burned.
When the dreams we’ve brought to reality in our strength are exposed as temporal, the depths of despair we feel threaten to swallow our hope and courage. But this is actually the birth pangs of real life! Only when false hopes are exposed as empty, can truth finally penetrate — and the One who is Truth and Love enters deep within the broken places.
Our little Velveteen Rabbit soon encounters the “nursery magic Fairy” — the one who turns love into life for playthings. Listen to their conversation and ask if you need a similar chat with the One is the source of life and love — creator and sustainer of all that is really real?
“I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved … and turn them into Real.”
“Wasn’t I Real before?” asked the little Rabbit.
“You were Real to the Boy,” the Fairy said, “because he loved you. Now you shall be real to every one.”
Our journey to really real is never based on what someone else says or thinks about us. Real is entering the design God had for you before time began. Real happens when you prefer Life and Love that is really real to the illusions you created.
We are not ‘playthings’ for the world; we are precious treasures of God, beloved by the most High. He does not want us to settle for less. If the Velveteen Rabbit’s story has stirred your heart for more, I encourage you to take in the six-day series, Journey to Abundant Living. Thank you for spending time journeying with me to the heart of God.
