Yesterday I saw the most interesting thing… a bunny rabbit crossing Logan’s Main Street down by 3oo South.  I first spotted the bunny as I waited for my green left arrow, and the bunny was on the green strip on the side of Main Street facing me, and I thought that certainly that it was not real.  But when it moved, I realized that in fact it was quite real indeed, then alarm got ahold of me… the bunny was on the side of Main Street!  A five lane road, with two traveling lanes in each direction, a turning lane in the center, and nice shoulders for improved traffic flow!  My next thought was “Does anyone else see this bunny?”  And as I looked around at the other cars who were waiting or going, no one seemed to notice the bunny.

 My next thought was fear as I realized where the bunny intended to go.  ACROSS THE STREET!  “No Bunny!” I screamed in my head!  But it ignored the pleas of my mind and darted out into the street, fully intent on reaching the other side.  “Why does the bunny want to cross the road?” I puzzled, waiting for a punchline that would not end in certain death.  But there the bunny went, hopping as fast as his hind feet could move…. it was like watching the old video game ‘Frogger’ as this little hopper crossed traffic.  Cars zooming, totally oblivious to it’s mission, after all, they probably couldn’t see him very well, his colors made him nearly disappear into the color of the dirty road.

He hopped and hopped, fast as he could, and I dare say I could see this look of panic on his face.  He was almost there, then a blue car came buzzing along not giving a hoot of this hare, and the bunny zigged on a dime and zagged the other direction for a millisecond while the car mowed past, and after it was clear, the bunny made it to the other side.  This whole time you should have heard my screams from the inside of the car, both of my arms were stretched out in a frantic maneuver to wave the bunny clear, or at least to alert other passerby to this fragile situation.  The truck behind me must have noticed, because they too were looking intently on Mr. Bunny as he reached for a moment a sitting point on the green strip of our side of the road.

Why did the Bunny cross the road?  Cross 5 lanes of traffic?  Dare to leap out in front of speeding cars?  Why did he just sit and pause when he got to the other side? 

 I felt like I had just witnessed something miraculous, that nearly the rest of the world missed.  It was so out of place… so odd to see.  A bunny, in town, crossing busy Main Street.  It felt like the Twilight Zone… I mean this whole time, I watched the scene unfold in slow motion, and it was like I had to watch it, because my light stayed Red the whole time so that I could witness this scene play out.

I asked my friend for thoughts on what this could mean, and what he shared stirred me… in that maybe

this event speaks of the “life” of this season (Easter and Resurrection Power), i.e. the bunny vs. the distractions of our current lives that run contrary to the flow of life (the road traffic). I wonder if the Father is saying that at this time, He wants His life to redirect the traffic of our lives, where life consumes us, not traditions, religious activity, or our own small understanding. Rather, He wants us to always live in the wonder of fresh, new life every day. This new life is fragile and can be quenched with the destructive activity of what we think is “necessary”. As well as that the other thing that sticks out is that the bunny made His own path, according to the instinctive DNA God created Him with. He wasn’t following a prescribed trail. This contrasted the traffic that was following a laid out road, which can be driven in a mindless and insensitive fashion. It is simply the place to go. From what I am gaining from the Lord, He loves for all of us to walk with Him in such a way as to create new trails by leaning upon Him, and exploring the freedom He’s given us to follow Him.

 So here I am, left to still ponder this… to consider this precious scene that I was privileged to witness and take hold of.  It wasn’t a game of Frogger, it was life- running against the flow, to a purpose, a place… that became the rest.

‘Running to Stand Still’… from a U2 song