I’ll never forget the afternoon my daughter woke up from her nap as red as a lobster and burning up. After a quick check with the pediatrician, we headed to the emergency room, where they diagnosed her with scarlet fever. I had no idea people even got scarlet fever anymore. It’s forever tied in my mind with The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. Maybe you’re familiar with the story about a stuffed bunny and a little boy who loves him so hard he becomes real.
Love is the only thing that can do that kind of magic.
We’re all a bit like the stuffed bunny in the story, who starts off with consciousness but no heart. It’s the experience of being loved and learning to love that awakens the magic that transforms cloth and stuffing into flesh and blood. Isn’t this what happens to us in Christ?
I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. Ezekiel 36:26
This is a metaphor, but also it isn’t. What God says He will do, He does. His goal has never been dusting us off, but making us into new, living persons. The whole of the Christian life is the experience of the old cloth-and-stuffing self being transformed bit by bit into living, responsive, tender flesh and blood. The invisible change of heart works its way outward into visible actions.
There are abundant examples of this right outside my front door right now. In the fall I planted tulips. Dry, papery bulbs that were buried in darkness have undergone a miraculous transformation hidden from view. What I planted looked nothing like what’s bursting from the earth in a riotous multicolored display. The bulb is certainly a tulip, but the tulip in full bloom is glorious.
The Bible speaks again and again of God’s work of transforming us from one thing into something else, a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:15). This doesn’t mean getting rid of or writing over who we are. It’s more like moving us from bulbs to flowers. Christ promises to change dead things into something else. He proved it was possible with His Resurrection on Easter morning. He accomplishes this magic through His powerful, unstoppable, real love.
“‘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.” – The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams