Now rabbits are cute little animals, but they were destroying all the gardens in our neighborhood. They just love to eat lots of the flowers and vegetables that we grow, especially when the plants are small and tender. But we knew we wouldn’t have much of a garden with so many rabbits eating breakfast, lunch, supper and snacks in between in our backyard. How were we to get rid of them?
One of our friends had an animal fall-trap. It was a long, rectangular wire cage with a door at one end. You could hook the door open, but when a rabbit hopped onto the flat, raised, metal plate that was part of the floor, the rabbit’s weight would release the hook that was holding the door open. The door would quickly fall down and trap the rabbit inside. It did not hurt the rabbit.
The rest of the cage floor was wire mesh, with plenty of space between the squares of wire to plant bean seeds. I know that rabbits love to eat tender, young green bean plants, so I planted some bean seeds right inside the trap behind the metal plate. I knew it would be a week or so before the bean seeds sprouted, but I was willing to wait. Sure enough, it wasn’t very long before the beans in the trap and the beans in the garden were popping up through the ground. So it wouldn’t be long before the rabbits found them in our little garden and, hopefully, inside the fall-trap too.
The first thing I do every morning, even before checking the fall-trap for a trapped rabbit, is to spend a little time reading my Bible and talking to the Lord Jesus in prayer. This particular morning I was reading in Luke chapter 17, about the Lord Jesus talking to His disciples about “offenses.” He told them it would be better for them to have a great, heavy millstone tied around their necks and be thrown into the sea, rather than to offend even one little child.
Since I wasn’t quite sure what that all meant, I looked it up. I was surprised to find that the words “offenses” and “offend” come from a word which means the part of a fall-trap that makes the trapdoor fall when touched, just like the metal plate in the trap in our garden.
Our fall-trap doesn’t hurt the rabbits. When we catch one, we take it far away to a field where it can have all it likes to eat. It probably looks like a wonderful place to the rabbit. What it doesn’t know is that there are lots of coyotes living in that field too, and it may end up as a meal for a coyote.
Now it may be all right to trap rabbits that are destroying your garden, but it’s not all right to treat people in a way that will end up taking them far away from the Lord Jesus. Study your Bible and spend as much time as you can to learn how the Lord Jesus treated people when He lived here on earth. His life was one of love and kindness to others. He wants your life to become a blessing to others too. One way you can be a blessing is to be kind, helpful and polite to your family and friends. Being mean or insulting or unforgiving can make them angry or upset and does not show them that you belong to Jesus.
Can you think of some ways you could be a blessing to others and show them Jesus’ love?
ML-08/17/2008