What Love Makes Real

In Margery Williams's beloved children's story The Velveteen Rabbit, a stuffed rabbit asks the old Skin Horse what it means to become Real. The Skin Horse replies that Real isn't how you are made — it's a thing that happens to you when someone loves you for a long, long time. Not just to play with, but really loves you.

The Rabbit wants to know if it hurts. "Sometimes," the Skin Horse admits. He goes on to explain that by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints. "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."

This is such a portrait of how God's love works in us. The Most High doesn't love us from a comfortable distance. He draws close, enters our brokenness, and transforms us from the inside out — even when it costs Him everything. The cross is proof that real love leaves marks.

Paul wrote that love "always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" (1 Corinthians 13:7). That kind of love is not decorative. It is costly, patient, and transformative.

The world may look at your worn edges, your scars, your years of faithful service and see someone shabby. But the Almighty sees someone becoming Real. And once love has made you Real, you can never be ugly — except to people who don't understand.