Hunny! 40 Days in the 100 Aker Wood – Day 33 – Friday after 5th Sunday of Lent

To Read:

Rabbit’s plan to teach Tigger a lesson by getting him lost in the wood becomes complicated as the day becomes more and more misty….

So they went.  At first Pooh and Rabbit and Piglet walked together, and Tigger ran round them in circles, and then, when the path got narrower, Rabbit, Piglet and Pooh walked one after another, and Tigger ran round them in oblongs, and by-and-by, when the gorse got very prickly on each side of the path, Tigger ran up and down in front of them, and sometimes he bounced into Rabbit and sometimes he didn’t.  And as they got higher, the mist got thicker, so that Tigger kept disappearing, and then when you thought he wasn’t there, there he was again, saying, “I say, come on,” and before you could say anything, there he wasn’t.

Tigger appeared suddenly, bounced into Rabbit, and disappeared again.  “Now!” said Rabbit.  He jumped into a hollow by the side of the path, and Pooh and Piglet jumped after him.  They crouched in the bracken, listening.  The Forest was very silent when you stopped and listened to it.  They could see nothing and hear nothing.

Rabbit nudged Pooh, and Pooh looked about for Piglet to nudge, but couldn’t find him, and Piglet went on breathing wet bracken as quietly as he could, and felt very brave and excited.

“That’s funny,” said Tigger.

There was a moment’s silence, and then they heard him pattering off again.  For a little longer they waited, until the Forest had become so still that it almost frightened them, and then Rabbit got up and stretched himself.

“I think it’s more to the right,” said Piglet nervously.  “What do you think, Pooh?” Pooh looked at his two paws.  He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin.

(The House at Pooh Corner – In Which Tigger is Unbounced)

From the Scriptures:

For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was handed on to them. ²² It has happened to them according to the true proverb,

“The dog turns back to its own vomit,”

and,

“The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud.”

(2 Peter 2v21-22)

For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.

(Luke 19v10)

‘If you seek revenge you should dig two graves, one for your enemy and one for yourself’ (Chinese Proverb)

Poor, poor Rabbit, seeking to give Tigger a lesson and having him ‘unbounced’ he finds himself a victim of the ‘success’ of his own plot and hoist on a petard on his own making.  For all of the ill-feeling we may have towards him about his seeking for vengeance perhaps now is the time, as Christopher Robin is so good at doing for Pooh, to look upon him, shake our heads and say, ‘Silly old Rabbit’.

Vengeance is the ultimate form of silliness.  It accomplishes nothing because it cannot restore anything.  Thank heavens that this is a task that belongs firmly and squarely in the Role Description of the LORD God Almighty (Romans 12v9).  Whenever and wherever we abrogate vengeance to ourselves we will get it wrong and we will be in the business of ‘digging two graves.’

Which reminds me of another, somewhat more recent aphorism, pronounced by a former United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer in the year 2000, ‘Healey’s first law of politics: when you’re in a hole, stop digging.’  Pooh and Piglet (and eventually Rabbit) learn this lesson.  Can we?

Revenge, getting our own back – which often ends up with us literally getting back what we have dished out – is a fool’s game and never a way of life which our Beloved calls us to follow.

Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.

(Mark 11v25)

Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.

(Matthew 5v39)

‘But Lord,’ I protest. ‘doing this doesn’t help me feel vindicated’.  And He smiles down at me, arms stretched wide on the cross, and lovingly says, ‘Silly old Andrew’.  And if His hands were not nailed down He would hold one of them out for me to hold on to.

This is when Piglet comes to rescue us for the first time (he’ll do it again next week).  Reaching out a hand to Pooh in the middle of the muddle of the mist and Rabbit’s failed plan for ‘unbouncing’ Tigger he says, ‘I just wanted to be sure of you.’  Please pass the Kleenex.  

How often have we done this as a child to our parent, as an adult to an intimate partner, and as a child again to an aging parent when roles are often reversed?  Why do we decide to go on pointless revenge seeking grave digging expeditions when our Beloved stands next to us, extends His hand and says, ‘I am with you always, to the very end of the age’? (Matthew 28v20).

It was at on Christmas Day 1939, a very difficult year for my nation, the Commonwealth, and the free world, that King George VI spoke these words to a people set about by violence, vengeance and possible destruction.  As we get ready to enter the Shadowlands of Holy Week perhaps these might be good words to ‘hold’ in our hands?

(Minnie Louise Haskins)

(Tommy Dorsey)