Say Hello to Mini Bunzini the Fourth!

Intro to a tiny rabbit, and a bonus Methodist Moment.

We have two rabbits that hang out in our yard: a larger one on the right side, and on the left side, a much smaller bun. I call it Tiny Bunny. My husband calls it MB4, short for Mini Bunzini the Fourth (or IV if you prefer it Roman numeral style, but if you're using the IV, you might want to name him/her something more formal, like Reginald).

I was heading out on my walk and I had my camera. So when I walked past the milkweed plants and I spotted Tiny Bunny, I whipped out the camera for a few shots. This is my best close-up of the little one, who is growing bigger every day.

As a wee rabbit, this one was inclined to spurt across the yard at top speeds. We called him/her Bullet Bunzini for a while. Bunzini is the family name; they are a clan of very well respected, very old new-world rabbits.

So here is my picture for the day: Mini Bunzini the Fourth, looking very fine indeed! My soundtrack song is Lynyrd Skynyrd, with I Know a Little. For I know a little about buns!

And now for this Methodist Moment. . . .

It was evening, after a day where we ran lots of errands and had plenty of adventures in town. We'd carried the big air conditioner (probably 80 pounds) up the front steps, and I'd ended up with it on my lap, humping it up the stairs as I sat on my butt and my husband lifted the other end of it. My husband was alarmed; he'd never seen such a thing. But it worked. Hey, never say I was a girl who couldn't think outside the box!

Anyway, all of this is to say that we'd had a full day. And we were watching TV. He had some sporting thing on, but we were alternating with a detective story on another channel that wasn't bad at all. The girl wore very nice outfits and shoes for part of it; that made me happy.

But once in a while, we tune into a religious channel that shows Bible verses and plays hymns we know and shows beautiful videos of the natural world. It's soothing. If I were an old Methodist lady, I'd probably watch it all the time, instead of just occasionally. There will be plenty of time for that.

And they showed a Bible verse, which I'm presenting here, and as I read it, I suddenly had a flash of understanding, which I feel inclined to share. Here is the verse:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8, King James Version.

My sudden flash of understanding, as I wander around this world taking pictures of beautiful things, and seeing how amazing it is, how it all fits together, is that some of us are able to find God in even the simplest of things. A flower. A sunset. A frozen bubble upon a frosty dawn. A profusion of ferns in the forest. The patterns and reflections on the water. A wild creature, maybe even a tiny rabbit.

This is a verse I have known since I was a child, and my understanding of it so far was - If you will try to be good people, if you will look for God, your reward and blessing will be that you get to see Him (or Her, or It, or Whatever) at the END of the long journey of life.

My sudden flash of understanding was this: The journey itself is the blessing.

If you are walking around all day, looking at things, and seeing their beauty, and seeing them as manifestations of God on Earth, your blessing will be just that. You will walk with God every day, all day. It isn't some prize or reward that will be conferred upon you at the end of things!

I don't know if it's sacred, I don't know if it's silly. But there's my bit of scripture for the day, with a renewed understanding. The blessing happens while you are doing it; it is the journey, not the destination!

I've got a song for that, too, and so here is a favorite. I fell in love with the music of the Talbot brothers in the early 1980s in college. John Michael and Terry Talbot have a song called Behold Now the Kingdom, which I'm linking to here. Here's a line from it: Behold now the Kingdom. See with new eyes!

And that's your Methodist Moment for the day!