1 John 3:1 “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
In the touching old children’s story of the Velveteen Rabbit, there is a conversation between Skin-horse and Rabbit as they lie side by side one day in the nursery before Nana comes to tidy up. Skin-horse is telling Rabbit about life. Rabbit asks him: “What is real? Does it mean having things buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you’re made,” says Skin-horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time – not just to play with but really loves you, then you become real.” “Does it hurt?” asks Rabbit. “Well, sometimes,” says Skin-horse, for he’s always truthful. “For when you’re real, you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?” asks Rabbit. “It doesn’t happen all at once,” says Skin-horse, “you become, it takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily apart or have sharp edges or have to be carefully kept. Gradually, by the time you are real, most of you has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby, but those things don’t matter at all because once you’re real you can’t be ugly except to people who don’t understand.”
Being real, choosing to love and be loved, can be messy and painful. C.S.Lewis wrote: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” He goes on to say that if you keep your heart intact, it will become “unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” When his wife died of cancer, he questioned: “Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers, only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness. That’s the deal.”
Lord, I choose to love and be loved today. Amen!
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