I'm Turning My Life Around

I was approaching on my bicycle, and wasn't sure what the walking sign was. It looked like a giant cloud, but the sign said Mattress Sale, so I thought perhaps it was a walking mattress. As I came closer, I saw it was a giant bunny rabbit, and the determined face inside the head portion was chanting something over and over. As I passed, I heard her say, "I'm turning my life around."  This was incongruous enough coming from a giant bunny hoisting a Mattress Sale sign but what I heard her say as I was a little further down the sidewalk was even more memorable, "I'm giving my life to God."

You never know what kind of circumstances will finally spark that moment of faith, of resolution to be more than what you have been, to live finally in the grip of the Savior. I wondered whether the Bunny Sign job was the straw that broke the camel's back, or was it the first step out of the morass? There are many things much much worse than working as a giant bunny selling mattresses.  I have to admit that once I was out of earshot, I did laugh. I couldn't help it. However, her glowing and determined face did not appear comical despite the costume around it. Her face seemed resolute and even noble.

I noticed from my car later that afternoon, she was still in the bunny suit at the same spot, and while I couldn't hear her, she was clearly still repeating those words over and over-
"I'm turning my life around. I am giving my life to God."

On that same bikeride, I had ridden the same lovely Greenway trail I usually ride. I was thinking how I had grown used to its beauty, and it had become commonplace. I no longer looked upon the stream and woods with the same glow of appreciation I had felt when I first gazed upon them. I had been contemplating how God's messages are sometimes so frequent, so familiar, and so similar, that I lose sight of how spectacular they are, every single one of them. I had resolved that I would try to notice and revel anew over what had become familiar.  And then, the giant God loving bunny had plopped into my drifting stream of thoughts. Complacency and familiarity were suddenly rippled with the splash of incongruity.

"Here is my message that has been of Old but each time it is New!," said God, "Walk in the newness of my spirit and I will give you abundant life, new and overflowing.  And while it is yet today.....HOP to it!"

Acts 5:19-21 (New International Version)

¹⁹But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. ²⁰"Go, stand in the temple courts," he said, "and tell the people the full message of this new life."