Rabbits in Winter

Rabbits in Winter

(by Donna Schaper/alive now!)

You probably don’t know my rabbits.  They moved here from Vermont in a box last July.  Some boy was handing them out on the street corner and all three of my children sat down in front of the box as we walked by.  The sign said free rabbits.  The kids said sit-down strike.

I thought it was fine to have rabbits outdoors in the summer, but I was scared about the winter.  I didn’t want them in the house.  Then somebody told me about the way rabbits grow fur.  They grow it as the temperature demands.  This no doubt is yet another piece of the majesty of God, putting fasteners on the seas, morning lights in the sky, fur on the rabbits.

Take a family that gets into crisis:  a child that fails to thrive or goes on drugs.  The day the tragedy announces itself the family does not have what they need to cope.  When they tell you they don’t know how they are going to cope, you have to agree.  They don’t know. Yet, their fur hasn’t grown.  But what we see – in the parents’ support groups of a thousand hospitals – is fur growing, capacity increasing.  Our strength is made manifest in struggle.  Our growth occurs because of the struggle.  The fur grows in response to winter slowly and surely.  The bread comes to us day by day.

            I see this in my personal life all the time.  I’ll say enough.  I’ll shout too much.  God won’t say much back.  And then I’ll find a new opening at the bottom of the well.  A new capacity to take risks.  A renewed capacity to love and forgive.  A crevice when I thought there were no more places to go to feed on the tree.

I have often heard it said: “First, you jump.  Then, you get your wings.”  In the deep of winter our fur grows.  Our capacity to handle trouble grows with the trouble.

(Reprinted with permission by the Upper Room)