God's Love is like rescuing Baby Bunnies

For the past several years we have had a nest of baby bunnies in our backyard. Two years ago we even got a few pictures of them once they were out and moving around. Last year, we found the nest, but never saw the bunnies. This year we had one again in the spring and again I don't remember seeing them, but then a second one popped up more recently. Two in one year. Yes, bunnies do reproduce a lot!

Those little bunnies get scared quite easily and once they get scared, they want to duck for cover. Unfortunately, on occasion, that has led to one or another of them running for cover under the lawn mower when they hear that big scary noise coming. Totally NOT where they should be going. Luckily, I've never had to witness this tragedy, just heard about it from my hubby.

Yesterday, hubby decides it's time to mow the lawn. I warned him to watch out for those little bunnies, but he assured me that they were still too small to be out of their hole. Well, he came in a few minutes later to let me know he had been mistaken, they were out and roaming around the yard.

I tried to convince him to not mow, but he insisted it had to be done.

So, we found a large aluminum bucket and I put a towel on the bottom to make the bunnies feel more secure. We found three in the yard. They were so tiny!! Their little ears were probably no more than a half inch tall and their whole bodies were about 4 inches long. They were trying to get up on the bottom beam of the fence and kept falling down. Obviously they were not totally steady yet. It was really cute.

We managed to catch two in the bucket (took a lot of coaxing) but the third wedged himself pretty tightly behind the corner post of the fence. So we had to leave him and hope he stayed there.

I left the bucket in a shady spot on the patio until hubby was done mowing. I came in as he started mowing and I looked out the window just in time to see the head of a tiny little bunny running across the yard away from hubby and the lawn mower. Thinking it was the little guy who had wedged himself into the corner, I went back out to catch him.

That little sucker did not want to get caught!! He put up quite a fight, with his little ears twitching in fear. "You just didn't know what's good for you," I told him. I was trying to keep him from harm and he kept wanting to run the other way!

I finally got him into the bucket with his other two siblings. I also checked the corner of the fence again and sure enough there was still a little bunny there too. So there were four total, or at least, four I could find.

But trying to round up those little bunnies to keep them safe while the yard was being mowed got me thinking some about God's love for us and, more importantly, our response to Him.

Think about it. God loves us all, you and me, and yet often we reject that love. He wants the best for us but we often turn away from that and think we know best. He tries to save us from harm, but we often run the other way. Whether it is with our fertility (using birth control, sterilization), premarital relations and/or living together before marriage, abortion, pornography, and so on and so on. We live in a relativistic society, where if it "feels" right it must be okay, where we can claim to be following our conscience so we must be doing "right" even when we don't have a properly formed conscience, and where the common thought of the day is that what is right for one isn't necessarily right for another which really ends up meaning that there is no right or wrong.

This line of thinking just separates us further from God's will for our life. The question we should be asking is: how often in our every day lives are we turning away from God, running in the other direction because we think we know best?

Just like those little baby bunnies. Sometimes God puts us on a path that looks a little scary or challenges our preconceptions of who we are or where we think we are going. At times like these we need to learn to trust God because he always has our best interests at heart.

In the end those bunnies were content in the bottom of that aluminum bucket. Their little ears stopped twitching and they calmly waited for what was to come. Once the yard was done and I released them they didn't run off (admittedly they were probably in a bit of shock), they just sat in the grass at my feet eventually getting up to quietly go back to exploring the yard. They no longer seemed scared.

I think trust in God does that to us too during those challenging times of our lives. Things may look scary, but we have to trust God; we go where He leads us and in the end we are no longer frightened of those challenges that were placed before us.

I'm trying to work on this more. I need more prayer time in my life to open myself up more to a better relationship with God, to also listen so I can learn His will for my life, and to recognize His love in all things. My biggest challenge right now is finding that time, or maybe the more accurate way to put it is making more time, for prayer.

I still don't know God's will for my life, but with more prayer I hope to be led down the right path, hopefully with more trust than fear.