The Rabbit Who Became Real

In Margery Williams' beloved children's book The Velveteen Rabbit, a stuffed toy asks the wise old Skin Horse a simple question: "What is Real?" The Skin Horse answers with words that have echoed through nurseries for over a century: "Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."

The Rabbit is uncertain. "Does it hurt?" he asks. "Sometimes," the Skin Horse admits. He explains that by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, your eyes drop out, and your joints grow loose. "But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

There is a gospel buried in this nursery story. Love — real love — costs something. It wears on us. It leaves marks. The Apostle Paul knew this when he wrote that love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7). Christ Himself was scarred by love, and those scars did not make Him less glorious — they made Him recognizable. When Thomas saw the wounds in those hands, he finally believed.

The marks that love leaves on us are not damage. They are proof that we have been made Real.