An asked for gift ( memories of a young child)

Love prospers when a fault is forgiven.

Proverbs 17 : 9

It was the way Dad was walking.  His feet splayed out like a duck and in his arms, with one hand carefully supporting the bottom, was a large,  brown, cardboard box. Then I noticed the box had a life of its own.  It shuddered now and then.  By the time he was at the door I wanted to know what was in the box.  He lowered it ever so gently as though it were very heavy or he was scared of what was inside.  At last when it was flat on the floor, he took one flap of the cardboard out from under the other. A little light went into the box. The other flap lifted! Up sprang a fully grown, adult, white rabbit.  Big, long, straight up ears. Red eyes! Powerful back legs and slim front legs.  Dad grabbed and I do believe it was his ears and he was back in the box.

I named him Twinkles!  I had been asking for one for a long time.  A little ask every day until this… I had done a recitation of Psalm 23 in church that Sabbath and on the Monday Twinkles was in our home.  Mom said it was because I had done so well.

Twinkles wasn’t the sort you could pet or cuddle.  He loved the wild side and he and Mum got on fine.  He jumped through the spray as she watered the garden.  In fact he had a good free life  until he went missing. But then Mum went knocking at all the neighbours’ doors and found him in a kitchen cupboard where they were considering rabbit pie.  He survived that but then one day Mum said he had died.  I remember asking where and how and with tears she told me. A simple lying down and going to sleep with no marks or wounds just old and tired.

Christ commissioned His disciples to proclaim a faith and worship that would have in it nothing of caste or country, a faith that would be adapted to all people, all nations, all classes of men and women.

E.G. White