What It Means To Become Real Series

¡§Happily Ever After¡K¡¨ ¡V Part Two - The Velveteen Rabbit

Something Old/Something New

Introduction: Read from, ¡§The Velveteen Rabbit - How a Toy Becomes Real¡¨

¡§The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn’t how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "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."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn’t happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. 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. Once you are real you are always loved."

The Rabbit was concerned because he felt he didn¡¦t have what he needed to be accepted by the BOY. He misunderstood that it was not something he was supposed to DO but it was solely because of who he WAS. The Rabbit thought because some toys were NEW and he was OLD that he was of no value.

Sadly, we often make the same mistake with one another based on putting the NEW/OLD spin in our vocabulary.

„X People of Faith: ¡§Give me the ¡¥Old Time Religion¡¦ while others would say, ¡¥I want the New Contemporary style!¡¦

„X People in Marriage: ¡§Me and your grandma are an old married couple.¡¨ ¡§Hello, we¡¦re Newly weds!¡¨

„X People using different Methods: ¡§The OLD school suggests this is what is needed.¡¨ ¡§The NEW school of thought is¡K¡¨

„X People discussing age: ¡§He is just in that OLDER generation.¡¨ ¡§He¡¦s nothing but a NEW pup, not wet behind the ears.¡¨

¡§Something old, something new;

Given the feeling we hold for new and old, we make judgments and usually arrange them in a given way according to our personal preference, not by biblical principle; so we left in life and even the Church with two schools of thought.

I. The Old is Always Better than the New (Proverbs 16:31)

¡§Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.¡¨

Illustration: If you were born prior to 1945 the following items followed you:

„X Television set

„X Contact lenses

„X Credit Cards

„X Ballpoint pens

„X Dishwashers

„X Computers

„X Copy Machines

„X McDonalds

„X Day Care Centers

„X Group Therapy

„X Birth Control Pills

Also Consider:

„X Buy a Coke for a nickel

„X One nickel would buy stamps for one letter and two postcards

„X $600 would buy you a new Chevy

„X 11cents would buy one gallon of gasoline

„X 1930 Social Security said retirement age is 65 and only 7.5 million Americans fit into that category. Today almost 65 million are at age 65

„X Grandma Moses, famous painter, late bloomer. Didn¡¦t paint until age 75, no formal training and produced more than 1,500 works of art considered masterpieces. More than 150 of them after age 100!

„X Ben Franklin was 81 when moderating the adoption of the Constitution of the United States of America

„X Caleb was 80 years old when he asked to go to war to take a Mountain that was promised to him as an act of his obedience when he was 40!

„X Moses was 80 years old when God really began to use him mightily for all of history to review.

Let¡¦s listen to the Word of God and see if we can answer the debate from scriptures: