The Mended Wood
I had a conversation this week with a friend from Church who, upon my recommendation, purchased The Green Ember series of books (or, as we call them in my home, the Bunny Books). That conversation was promoted by a note I received from her, mentioning how brutal the first book seemed. She’s right. Halfway through the first book, there seems to be only devastation and sorrow as Heather and Pickett, two young rabbits at play, return to find their home burnt to the ground. Their parents and younger brother missing. And they are left all alone. Brutal indeed. And all the more so because rabbits are so cute and helpless.
The Great Wood is a place of legend, the comfortable home for which these rabbits had been made, and they for it. That Great Wood had fallen under a curse. One day our of Heather and Pickett’s memory violence and chaos descended. The rabbits all made refugees. Refugees seeking to restore a fallen kingdom: farmers, artists, carpenters, midwives, cooks, poets, healers, singers, smiths, weavers — workers of all kinds. All doing their part.
Painters painting a vision for the Great Wood renewed. Weavers spinning clothes for a grand banquet on a future day. Cooks perfecting a longed for feast yet to come. All of them heralds of a future hope. A hope which, day-by-day, gives strength to their labors.
“It will not be so in the mended wood!” That is the refrain which carries these rabbits through “many dangers, toils, and snares.” It’s not revenge which drives them to mend, seeking to slay the fierce wolves who’ve murdered kith and kin or carried them captive into a far-away. Nor is it galling defiance which raises the rabbits from bed each morning, back to their various tasks and occupations. No, they are driven by a vision more compelling than any of those such things alone or combined.
A vision for a mended wood. A world made new.
The reason I so love the Bunny Books is their constant Gospel refrain. Jesus and His-Kingdom-made-new echo through them from cover to cover, reminding the Church, refugees that we are in the midst of a dark and dangerous world, sojourners through despair and sorrow … “It will not be so in the mended wood.”
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And He who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’” Revelation 21:4-5
The Green Ember by SD Smith – https://sdsmith.com/book/the-green-ember/
Pastor Josh+
