To Recognize The Rabbit

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For a 6 year old child, 30 minutes can seem like an eternity. Nonetheless, the promise of spending time with my Dad down by the river in the woods was too lucrative a prospect to pass up. So I left my toys, and my daydreams, and my busyness and walked down the Big Hill behind the Brown House toward the woods.

When we arrived there, Dad began to move slowly and speak quietly, and though I didn’t know why, I mimicked him. Dad motioned for me to slowly sit down beside him on a log just inside the tree line of the woods. In front of us, about 40 feet away, was a big wood pile comprised of branches and old pulled-up stumps and the like.

My Dad slowly pointed to the wood pile, and spoke to me in hushed tones. “Son,” he whispered, “look at the bottom of that wood pile, right in the middle next to the ground, and tell me when you see the rabbit.” “OK, Dad,” I whispered, and turned with anticipation to see the rabbit in the wood pile.

My anticipation quickly faded, however, as I stared at a wood pile that obviously had no rabbit in it. “Dad,” I whispered respectfully, “I don’t think there’s rabbit in that wood pile.” “Keep looking at that wood pile, son,” he replied, “at the bottom, right in the middle next to the ground, and tell me when you see the rabbit.”

Time after time we repeated our dance, with me claiming there was no rabbit and my Dad encouraging me to just keep looking. And then, after 30 minutes, it happened.
Before my eyes, in precisely the same spot at which I’d been staring for half an hour, a rabbit appeared. It was as though that rabbit leaped into my vision. Hidden amongst the dead branches and brittle leaves of his surroundings, he crouched as though frozen stiff, unmoving, knowing that I had been watching him the whole time.

I was, for perhaps the first time in my life, speechless. My Dad smiled silently, allowing me to soak in the magnitude of the experience without hindering it with words. After a few minutes, he spoke quietly and said, “Son, sometimes you need to keep looking at something for a while to see what’s really there.” That was the lesson, but it was 25 years before I would truly recognize what that meant.

You see, Jesus Himself used to go to the mountain to pray. It seems clear that he did it because that’s the only place that He could be alone. He had to climb to so high a place that other people wouldn’t follow, a place arrived at through greater labor and with a higher price of ascent.

It was in this place, high above the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, that He found vision. From this lofty vantage point, He could look down upon the issues of life and godliness and see them clearly, even as He was looking above to His Heavenly Father. Our Lord Jesus found clear vision on the mountain of solitude and prayer.

He did not make that climb just once. Again and again, He would climb to the mountain to pray. Time and time again, He would leave the people and problems and distractions of this life to look solely and completely upon His Father.

As we make this same trek, we will receive something vital to our lives. By going to the mountain and looking upon the things of God again and again, the clear vision we experience there will be transformed - sometimes in an instant and before our eyes - into the recognition of what we’ve been staring at (and praying for) the whole time. It is as though the understanding leaps into our vision in its appointed time.

Our Father is drawing us to the mountain, if we’re listening. Not to a place of casual, hastily blurted requests to a vending machine God. God is drawing us to a place where we remove the shoes from our feet because the place whereon we stand is holy ground. He is drawing us to a place so remote, and yet more intimate than we have ever known.

I would like to think that, at times, our Father does as my Dad did; that, as we bask in the wonder of learning from Him, He stands quietly smiling at a child so beloved. Oh, how He adores His precious children.

Have you been praying for a while without an answer? Perhaps it is time you discovered the mountain. Perhaps you used to visit the mountain, and now it is time for you to return. Perhaps you are on the mountain and it is time to make that higher climb with a greater price but a greater blessing.

Then again, perhaps you are already there, and it is time to just keep looking “at the bottom, right in the middle next to the ground” until you see the rabbit.

“Son, sometimes you need to keep looking at something for a while to see what’s really there.”

Amen, Daddy, amen.

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[So I went with Him, and when we were climbing the rocky steps up the hillside, my beloved Shepherd said to me] O My dove, [while you are here] in the seclusion of the clefts in the solid rock, in the sheltered and secret place of the cliff, let Me see your face, let Me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.
Song of Solomon 2:14 (AMP)

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