The Non-Power of Bunny Prayers

I started out young in my testing of God. I was probably twelve years old when I sat in the green lawn under a tree, holding a bunny in my lap and wondering whether God was real. The black-and-white-spotted bunny nestled securely between my legs morphed with the Bible verses rolling around in my mind. “…faith as a grain of mustard seed…” “…whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do.”

Anything? Really? I wanted, wildly, to prove those verses were true, and to test at the same time whether God were real.

I knew what I could pray for. I would let my bunny hop out into the lawn, and pray that it would come back to me. Usually, our bunnies escaped whenever they could, twisting from our arms and sprinting across the grass at the slightest opportunity. We’d spent hours already, chasing down bunnies with a butterfly net. But this bunny was tamer than some. I wanted it so tame it would loll around at my feet like a puppy dog, ready at any time to be picked up and put back into its pen. And really, why shouldn’t it? When I had let it hop around in an enclosed space, it never tried to get away. Why should the great green lawn be any different?

Anyway, if God was real, and if I had faith, I could pray a released bunny right back into my lap.

I unclamped my legs, watched the bunny slowly venture out onto the grass. It was taking its time, going slowly, not sure of its freedom. There was still time to pick it up.

“Dear God, I pray that bunny will come back to me.”

I watched with mounting unease and anticipation as the bunny hopped outside the reach of my arms. But I had faith, and a Bible verse.

“Dear God, please make that bunny hop back to me.”

I did not doubt. My faith was fervent. But when the bunny did not hop back, and put the length of two trees between us, I grew nervous. I stood up, my prayer changing from, “Let that bunny hop back to me,” to “Let that bunny be still, so I can pick it up.” The bunny saw me coming, twisted, and was gone–lippety-lippety-lip–across the yard.

My “proof” of God had been destroyed, and I realized, unhappily, that I had been idiotic. My bunny had hopped away, and I still believed in God, because…well, because I needed to. At twelve years old, I may not have known how to put it into words, but at twenty-seven, I will say I had already had far too much teaching about God and personal involvement with Him to stop believing for the sake of a bunny. He constituted a large part of my life.

The next day a black-and-white-spotted carcass was found gnawed on the lawn, the prey of our farm dog. Nobody could understand why I had let the bunny get away, and I was too embarrassed to explain.

For years, I kept that incident locked in a small, unhappy corner of my mind. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about what I now considered an idiotic prayer, and yet–and yet–I had had faith, and a Bible verse. If there really was a God, and if He meant what He said, why hadn’t He answered me?

I learned to rim my prayers with phrases such as “according to your will” and “however you want it to work out.” Not only did these phrases seem to me to be Biblical, to my now-cautious mind they were a practical necessity. If I gave God room to say “no,” my faith could not be shattered when He failed to perform.

I continued to pray, and in praying, my faith grew. I prayed I would find my lost diary keys, and found them immediately afterward, in an unlikely place. In the early, weeping prayers of adolescence, I prayed for a friend I could talk to, and eventually found the sister I had always fought with previously. In those same weeping prayers, I asked that I could quit hating myself, that someday I could be free of the debilitating feelings of inferiority. Years later, I realized, startled, that that prayer had been answered when I had been forgetting to look.

I prayed hundreds of small prayers for hundreds of small and needy situations, and it is to the credit of God and not myself that out of all those hundreds of prayers, it is the bunny prayer I most remember. For so many of the prayers He’s answered, I have said “thank you,” briefly, and thought later, “I wonder if that would have happened anyway, if I hadn’t prayed.” If God continues to answer my prayers, it is evidence of His love and not of my gratitude. I’m guessing if He had answered my bunny demand, my reception of the “miracle” would have been just as cursory. Perhaps my faith and my understanding of prayer grew more over one conflicting “no” than it did over hundreds of easy yeses.

I grew to understand that prayer worked best when my need was deepest. I also began to realize that prayer worked to change me as often as it changed a circumstance. Often, it was my changing self that God used to fulfill the very thing I prayed for.

I remember once when an individual–a friend–had hurt me, and I was deeply and bitterly angry. I could not forgive her, and I thought, frantically, that I had to. For my own sake. I did not want this heavy hatred hanging on my neck. I went shopping with my mom and a couple of sisters and prayed, walking through stores, that I could forgive. In a gift shop, I saw the instrument of my forgiveness. It was a Willow Tree lady, one of those faceless figurines popular among my friends and me. This lady clutched a bouquet of flowers and proclaimed, on a little card that sat beside her, I will always love you. “Buy it for her,” something seemed to tell me. So I did, and the buying of it broke the heart of my anger in two.

It is prayers such as these, finally, that have given me my proof of God. I have heard of many miracle prayers, and they are amazing things that showcase God’s power, but not one of those miracles, happening to other people in other lives, have proved God to me like my little Willow Tree figurine sitting on a shelf. Truthfully, I am of a nature that tends to doubt and second-guess miracles. I suppose God already knew that about me, years ago, when he refused to cater to bunny whims. Imagine the conversation in future years:

“Grandma, how do you know there is a God?”

“Well, Sweetheart, one time I was sitting on the grass and I let a bunny go, and I asked God to make that bunny hop back to me, and it did.”

Who cares?

A Willow Tree figurine is far more effective.

I am realizing it is prayer itself, as much as the answers to prayer, that is the greatest proof of God. Prayer is a gateway and a channel, connecting man to a spirit world he cannot see. It is a form of communication that not only accesses God, but draws our spirits into communion with His. As we mature in the art of prayer, we begin not only to pray to God, but to pray with Him, because God also prays. Romans tells us that the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

While proof prayers seem to have little effect–Jesus called those who seek for a sign wicked and adulterous–praying with God, through need, is a power that rocks the world. God reserves the right to answer our need, rather than catering to selfish requests, and He reserves the right to answer in ways that far exceed our short-sightedness, but He does not limit the asking. Jesus said seven times, over the course of one discussion with his disciples, in John 14, 15, and 16, that whatever we ask, if we ask it in His name, we will receive.

Seven times. It is as though, above all else, He wanted his disciples to remember this one thing.

It is as though He dares us to ask.

So ask.

***

I’d love to hear from you, the readers. God has answered so many prayers, large and small, for all of us who have asked in Christ’s name. What prayers has He answered for you?