Lectionary Links (NL): November 10, 2019
22nd Sunday After Pentecost
Year 2: November 10, 2019
The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
(Written for ages 2-4)
Comment: This beautiful passage from Hosea uses the parent-child metaphor to describe the relationship between God and humankind. The Lord recounts how unfaithful Israel has been – the more God calls to them, the farther they run away. In Wise Brown’s book, a little bunny wants to get away from his mother, who describes a kind of relentless, unending love that pursued him wherever he goes. If he becomes a fish, his mother will become a fisher; if he becomes a bird, she’ll become the tree that he comes home to; if he joins the circus, his mother will become a tightrope walker. The little bunny concludes that he might just as well stay home and “be your little bunny,” which would’ve been a preferable tactic for the Israelites. You might ask children to think about why the mother bunny pursues her child – she loves him and wants the best for him, even as God loves us and wants the best for us. Even when we misguidedly try to “escape” from God, nothing we do can separate us from the love that pursues us all our days.
Thanks to Joshua Andrzejewski, Union Presbyterian Seminary alumnus and chaplain for the pediatric and women’s health units in the VCU Medical Center, for writing the Year 2 Narrative Lectionary Links.
Lectionary Links (NL): November 10, 2019 by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
