When our oldest son was born, a friend of the family gave him the book, The Velveteen Rabbit. It chronicles a fictional the story of a stuffed rabbit and his quest to become real through the love of his owner. The book, a metaphor of life’ s struggles, was first published in 1922 and has been republished many times since.
In the story the rabbit is in conversation w/ another toy in the nursery, the Skin Horse. The horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old, that his brown coat was worn and showed the seams underneath and the hairs in his tail had been pulled out.
He was ….the oldest and wisest of all the toys in the nursery.
“What is REAL?” asked the rabbit one day, of skin horse
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the skin horse. “It is a thing that happens TO YOU.
When a child loves you for a long, long time…, REALLY loves you, then you become real.”
“Does it hurt?’ asked the rabbit.
“Sometimes”, said the skin horse, for he was always truthful.
“When you are REAL though ……you don’t mind being hurt”
“Does it happen all at once, or bit by bit”, asked the rabbit
“It doesn’t happen all at once said the skin horse,
You… become.
It takes a long time….,
Generally by the time you are real, most of you hair has been loved off or drops out,
you get loose in the joints and very shabby.
But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“I suppose you are real”, said the rabbit.
The horse smiled. (For he had become real). He said to rabbit, “That was a great many years ago; but once you are REAL you can’t become unreal again. It last for a life time”.
Friends, the most basic oppurtunity God gives us in this life, no matter who we are, is our own becoming REAL, refining our souls, growing rooted in the REAL love of Christ.
Bearing the fruits of the Spirit is not so much learning new attitudes and consciously altering our patterns of behavior as it is a rediscovering and reclaiming – through out ALL of our lives -who and what God called and created us to be in the beginning.
To be REAL is to be free in Christ, daring to be loved, and in turn fruitfully loving others.
Our freedom in Christ is not evidenced by results but by our soul, but by our character. It is shown not by what we do, but the FRUIT we bear: love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Let’s make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, a story from a children’s book, or leave it on the pages of our Bible, but let’s breath its implications in every detail of our lives.
That means we will not compare ourselves, our church, our family, as if one were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives.
Each of us is an original. Each will bear fruit with just a little different twist.
-debbie
