The Gospel according to bunnies

In keeping with the Easter season, we found ourselves living out what I can only describe as the gospel—according to bunnies.

Nathan discovered a bunny nest that had met with a tragic accident, and somehow two tiny survivors remained. Their eyes weren’t even open yet, and one was badly injured. Of course, Nathan—being the softy that he is—wrapped them up and brought them home, determined to try.

The moment we held their fragile little bodies, something in us shifted. A wave of love and responsibility settled over us, and we found ourselves working together with a kind of focused care that doesn’t always come naturally in the busyness of everyday life. We prayed over them, bottle-fed them kitten milk, and celebrated every tiny victory—every feeding, every sign that their little bodies were still fighting to survive.

Before long, our lives revolved around feeding schedules and bowel movements, and strangely enough, we didn’t mind at all. We simply wanted them to live. Somewhere in that process, as He often does through the animals in my life, God began to teach me something deeper.

I realized that the depth of my love for those bunnies had nothing to do with how they responded to me. From their perspective, I must have seemed like a giant, terrifying creature—disrupting their world, constantly handling them, and doing things they couldn’t possibly understand. They didn’t know my heart, and the truth is, they couldn’t.

I found myself wishing, almost instinctively, that I could become a bunny for just a moment so I could tell them that I loved them, that I wasn’t there to harm them, and that everything I was doing was meant to make them strong enough to live. But of course, that kind of understanding wasn’t possible. Bunnies only understand bunny talk. And that realization stayed with me.

We are not so different. We try to understand God from a distance, forming our opinions from limited perspective and incomplete understanding. Even at our best, we tend to believe that He is only for us when we get it right—when we behave, when we measure up.

That is why the story of Easter matters so much.

God did not stay distant or leave us to figure Him out on our own. He stepped into our world through Jesus—fully God and fully human—so we could finally see what He is really like. In Jesus, we see a God who moves toward people, not away from them; a God who heals, restores, and welcomes before we ever earn it. And ultimately, we see a God who was willing to suffer and die, not to condemn us, but to bring us back to Himself.

Jesus didn’t just tell us about God. He showed us His heart.

And yet, even with that, we still find ways to turn it back into something we feel we must earn.

Sadly, our little bunnies did not make it. We cared for them for a week before they slipped away, and I found myself sitting there holding one of them, tears streaming down my face.

In that quiet moment, I had the sweetest thought. One day, when I step into Heaven and whatever greeting committee awaits comes out to meet me, I imagine that among them will be two plump, healthy bunnies hopping my way. And on that side, I won’t need a translator anymore.