--"Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, "I am running away." "If you run away," said his mother, "I will run after you. For you are my little bunny."
The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
It is a favorite book, read to the kids for years now. Tonight the youngest held it as she fell asleep, minutes before looking for the bunnies hidden in the pictures.
The little bunny's goal is to run away, but Mother bunny explains throughout the story that no matter where he goes she will be there to bring him back to her. Whether in a stream, in a garden, in a circus, or on a mountain, she refuses to let him get away.
I can relate to little bunny. I've wanted to run away recently, but I've felt a grip on me, a tenacious refusal to let me go off on my own. His hold is tight and not to be taken lightly. He does not just let me walk away easily. His grace was too costly for Him to allow me to flippantly walk from Him.
I have felt the graveness of the consequences of running away. How could He let His own take so lightly His grace without allowing correction?
Still I have wanted to be the little bunny as the children's book describes and get far from all. Go to the unfamiliar, the foreign, the different, the places I've never visited before, the places I think may hold the unknown that beckons to me...that calls me to come and taste...just one bite.
But He does not let me go so easily. He holds and keeps me. I fight an inward struggle, wanting "freedom" that would bind me while knowing His is the way of complete peace. I have been willing to forsake the peace, but He has not been willing to forsake me. He holds on to His because His is a "costly grace", His sacrifice is not to be taken lightly.
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