“What is real?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
Real. Meaningful. Authentic. Significant.
Things I want to be.
Things I want my life to be.
But what is real?
Is it having all the bells and whistles? Is it being the very latest and greatest?
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the 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.”
No, real is not about the gee-gaws and do-dads. It’s not about externals.
The best job, the biggest house, the nicest car.
Those things aren’t what makes life meaningful, real, significant.
What makes me real is the One who loves me.
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“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 your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.”
Real doesn’t happen in a day.
Authenticity. Meaningfulness.
A flash in the pan, here and then gone might be exciting, but it’s not real.
Real takes time. It takes work.
It’s faithful presence. It’s being used. It’s giving pieces of yourself away. It’s being with people in the tough times and in the joyous times and in every time in between.
“The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.”
What I would like to have the end result without the middle.
To be effective without having to get up every morning and go to work. To make a difference without having to get involved in people’s messes. To be authentic without having to expose my own messes. To be holy without having to fight against my flesh.
Oh that Real could be achieved in one glorious battle instead of through this tedious, painful process called sanctification.
The process of becoming real is boring.
Yet boring is the life to which God has called most of us.
“Scripture also calls us to embrace the mundane and ordinary as holy and beautiful: ‘… aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands’ (1 Thessalonians 4:11).”
~Andrew Byers, in We Need Boring Christians
And in the boring, we become REAL.
Meaningful.
Authentic.
Significant.
*****All quotes except the last taken from Margery Williams Bianco’s The Velveteen Rabbit*****
Don’t forget to take a look at Barbara H’s meme “The Week in Words”, where bloggers collect quotes they’ve read throughout the week.