Easter Weekend and Bunny Turds

This is Easter weekend. For those of us who are believers we hold this weekend not just in high regard but as the basis for the faith we live by. This time is all about Christ and his incredible gift of life through grace. Christians worldwide will pray, renew and hold services dedicated to the death and complete resurrection of Christ while non-believers will stand in awe citing that those people have believed in a myth and fairy tale as absurd as the Easter Bunny. They will cite that the Easter Bunny even though adopted by the Lutheran Church was really built around a Saxon tale and that it is once again those Christians who think it is their day. Is this Easter Sunday the actual day that Christ rose from the grave? I don’t know. Resurrection Day is linked to the Jewish Passover as that was the meal Christ had with the disciples on the night He was arrested. Churches and theologians will argue the date as real but I tend to think that it really doesn’t matter. It is the action of that matters more than anything else. In last week’s blog, I challenged to seek out forgiveness and give forgiveness. To fix relationships and to work through the personal guilt that we may have on issues within our life. This week I want to talk about Bunny turds that get left all over the place and how they have value to us.

When I was a kid in Fort Worth, Texas, my brother wanted a bunny. My parents relented and so we built a bunny cage with a wire floor. There was a hutch to the side where the bunny could get out of the weather. Don’t remember that rabbits name, maybe Harvey from the movie) but I do remember he went from being a cute little bunny to a rather large turd machine. My brother tired of him pretty quickly and would pay me a nickel each morning to go out and give that bunny food and water before school when he didn't want to do it. What always amazed me was the amount of rabbit “stuff” that quickly accumulated under the wire floor of that cage.

Well as it turned out my father liked to garden and so we, meaning my brother and I, had to shovel up that rabbit stuff and spread it through the garden. Now remember in 1969, we didn’t have a fancy roto-tiller, we had a shovel and garden fork to turn that dirt over and work that stuff in to the soil. We were having just loads of fun (saracasm here) right up until my brother decided that those little pellets made good ammo for a slingshot. I want to tell you, getting hit in the back by a rabbit turd going 70 mph from the pocket of a slingshot just ain’t no fun. What is even less fun is when your dad, who believed in whipping a butt, is hit by one that was thrown back and he didn’t believe you when you said, “he did it first.”

So the moral of this story is actually pretty simple. Even the turds we encounter in life have value. They teach us that life doesn’t always smell like roses. We don’t always win a trophy and we can learn even from the bad things that happen in our life. We can grow even when things seem to be going crappy (pardon the expression.) There is no magic to living a great life. There is learning from everything we encounter. If something we buy breaks, we should learn from it. If we have a conflict with someone else, we should learn from it. We can try flinging those turds at people we are mad at but in the long run, we end up just getting our butt whipped and wonder why they didn’t get caught and we did.

So here's the answer. Examine your "life nuggets," that you would rather fling over the fence. See what they can teach you. What is it about ourselves, others and situations that have a lesson for us. Me, I learned a few very important lessons that I will share. First, don't hit your dad with a rabbit turd, bad things happen to you when you do that. Second I learned that bunny turds have a trajectory that requires some speed (slingshots work great); third, I learned flinging crap at others just comes back at you especially if your aim is bad and lastly I learned never throw something at your brother when your father is behind him.

Happy Easter..