Margery Williams wrote a wonderful tale called The Velveteen Rabbit. I suspect many people regard it as a beloved children’s story, when really it is a story of the heart for all of us at any age.
“What is real?” asked the velveteen rabbit, thinking that maybe the fancy wind-up toys and toy boats with intricate rigging were more real than he, that perhaps he was the only toy in the nursery that wasn’t real. “Real isn’t how you’re made,” replied the skin horse. “It’s a thing that happens…when a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real.”
It reminds us that we become real to others not only by what we do but even more so by who we are. It happens when we accept others unconditionally. Gifts and kind words and acts of service are often involved with becoming real but these are seldom the whole story. It is true what one of our 150 post Katrina volunteers said, “There is nothing more encouraging than a dry roof over your head.” True as that might be, there is another truth. It is like we used to say in the seventies, “Become Jesus with skin on. Spread His love in a most practical way.” You become real to someone when you connect your heart and their heart with the heart of our loving God. People remember a good deed for a long time. They remember a person who touched their heart forever.
Have you ever noticed it is one thing when someone says they will pray for you? And quite another yet when they pray with you? I think I will never forget the look on Denise’s face when we offered to pray with her when she brought our food to us in a little hole in the wall restaurant in Marrero, Louisiana. She looked at us with tears in her eyes and asked, “You’d do that for me?!”
Another expression of becoming real is to sit and visit with someone when you find no words for prayer, and perhaps no words at all. It is as if being real together becomes its own prayer that is heard by our loving God.
Sometimes you become real to a person over a short season. Other times, it is just like the skin horse said, “It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. 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. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” “The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” – Jesus, John 13:34 (Become REAL.)