The rabbit

Sunday morning, and, feeling a little dazed, I prepare to go to church. I pause to look out at snow softly drifting, everything moving as in a slowed-down dream. I’m not acclimated to worship services with sanitizer and masks, to singing hymns scattered and distanced, to the hesitation and pulling back from handshakes and hugs, all not quite familiar, strangely alien and disorienting. It might be easier to worship on the couch through a laptop. But we’ve decided that it would be good to be with people, and so I get ready.

Phil’s voice comes up the stairs, looking for me. “Kristin? I could use some help.” We find each other, he just in from outside, cold rolling off his thick orange Carhart jacket. Not until I get close do I see what he cradles in his arms. Brown and gray mottled fur, brown eyes large in a small face – a rabbit. I reach out. Clumped fur has been deeply chilled in our backyard creek. I feel quivering movement. This fragile small body has the breath of life in it, for now. I gently pull the cord of Phil’s jacket out of its face. 

Phil continues to nestle the shivering clump of fur while we go out to the barn and find the box where we’ve raised chicks, and we find the heat lamp, and a pile of straw. We nestle the rabbit in a straw bed, set up the lamp. We’ve started saying “she,” though we don’t know. She’s tried moving her legs but can’t seem to right herself. Phil says that in the creek, she’d struggle to climb up the bank and then fall back in, hurt, or as if she’d lost her sense of balance. Now she lies in the straw, a small mottled pile, eyes sometimes open, sometimes closed.

Thirty minutes later, we put on masks and walk into church, just in time. Find our distanced place in a pew. Sing songs and pray prayers, themed this morning on the glory of God in creation. We consider a section of Scripture which teaches God’s people to care for the land through the ancient practice of Sabbath. Our pastor unfolds a vision. The Sabbath is not just for people. It is also for the good of the earth, for the animals; actually, our practice of Sabbath can even bless the wild animals in our land. 

The rabbit. 

God looked at his creation – sun and stars, earth and water, trees and fields, birds and fish, livestock and wild animals, and he said “It is good.”  Then, placing Adam and Eve into this creation, he gave them the privilege and responsibility to tend to it, care for it. The goodness should have flowed out, out and out from this garden, expanding to fill the whole world. But wreckage and devastation and calamity snuck in. And ever since, the beauty and goodness of God’s creation has been shot through with decay, groaning, pain and death.

One small rabbit, through some trauma, tumbled into nearly freezing water in our yard and couldn’t escape, until someone saw, leaned down, and lifted her out. Brown eyes, pink-tinged ears, and breath in tiny lungs – these reveal the glory of God. And the injury and freezing and quivering fear reveal the tragic brokenness of the world.

Sabbath shapes us to seek the well-being of all creation. We slow down. We walk instead of run, talk instead of scroll through newsfeed. We notice what surrounds us.

The Lord of the Sabbath gave breath to the rabbit now shivering in my barn. The miracle of life co-exists, for now, with the violent rupture of death. Jesus took on a body to bear the groaning of creation with us and for us. And now he invites us, in our limited, weak ways, to use our own hands to participate in his healing, his restoration, his enterprise of making all things new. Our care for God’s creation is an act of faith and hope in his redemption, an affirmation of all he has done and will do.

Caring for a freezing rabbit can be devotion to God.

After the service we talk with friends, seeing some for the first time in months, hearing their news. The violence of this groaning world has ravaged some of them. Calamitous decay invades their bodies, shaking their lives. As they suffer, they look in faith to the one who will restore everything. They groan along with all creation, and they also gaze forward in hope to the day when the children of God will be revealed and all will be made new. 

We drive home through the quietness of winter fields. Fresh snow touches hay bales. Trees, dormant but alive, stand like steady sentinels. Small animals, hidden from us, shelter from the cold. We pass homes that hold stories of sorrow and hope. We have been moved by the suffering and faith that we have just heard from friends. Thinking about them, our minds also are on the rabbit. Will it still be breathing? Or will its life have perished under the heat lamp in our barn? 

We open the door, look down into the box. The rabbit’s eyes are open, soft and brown. She sits more uprightly than when we’d left. The fur now looks a bit fluffy, and we can appreciate the beautiful coloring. She seems still, very still. But yes, there is the slight movement of breath. She takes a little water from Phil’s finger. 

The God who counts the stars and knows them by name also fashioned this rabbit. The harsh dangers of the disrupted world have nearly killed it. But Jesus has come to his creation to undo the curse. He intends to heal the hurting, free the captives, and make all things new. Gladness and joy will overtake us. Death will be swallowed up by life. He invites us to join him in this redemption, little by little and where we can. In our own small ways, we try to care for land and rabbits, as well as people, with faith, hope and love. 

The fragile rabbit in the barn is my burning bush for today, a place where God touches earth and speaks. Cosmic theology lies in straw in a corner of a Michigan barn.

one day later, looking so much better