Chasing Mechanical Rabbits

Greyhounds chasing mechanical rabbit.

I’d never heard of greyhound racing until I recently read an article about mechanical rabbits. It seems that the racing of greyhounds has been around for a long time, but originally the dogs were enticed to run by first sending out a rabbit for them to chase. When caught the rabbits would squeal a child-like sound that caused many potential spectators to avoid the races. So an enterprising man named Owen Smith built a mechanical rabbit that was used as a lure to entice the greyhounds to run.

The thought of a fake rabbit being chased by greyhounds caused me a good chuckle but after a second or two that laugh turned into an introspective pause. How much of my life has been spent chasing fake lures?  The adversary puts so many “mechanical rabbits” in front of us, winds them up, and then watches us chase breathlessly after them. (And I’m sure he laughs as he watches.)

We chase appointments and fail to visit with our neighbors. We chase social pleasures and miss telling a bedtime story to a child. We chase wealth and fail to notice the beauty of a sunset or the unfolding of a rose. We chase after the prestige of having the cleanest house or the fittest body or the most in-style clothing and fail to grasp the lasting joys of life.

In short, we need to realize that mechanical rabbits are running all around us, but until we learn to identify a real rabbit we are constantly in danger of running after the wrong thing.

What Grizelda's Taught Me

Here in Utah it is a cold blustery day—the perfect day to cuddle up in my favorite chair covered in my favorite blanket and read a good book. But there are errands to run, meals to be fixed, drawers to be cleaned out, bills to be paid, lessons to prepare, and of course a BYU basketball game to be watched. There are always so many things to do and such little time to do them. But going through the battle with Grizelda brought me face to face with the possibility that time will run out and so I’d better use it to gather as much knowledge and make as many beautiful memories as possible because that’s all I’ll take with me—knowledge and memories.

So what will I do today? The errands first because that means getting the food for D5’s birthday dinner tomorrow. (That will be a new memory to take with me!) Next preparing a lesson for tomorrow. (That means gaining new knowledge.) And watching the game is a must because my grandson is coming to watch it with me. (Big time memory!) But I’ll also spend at least a few minutes in the chair wrapped in my favorite blanket because that is both gaining knowledge and making a warm fuzzy memory. And the rest of the things on the list will get done if there is time. 

But I’m not going to fret over them! 

I’ll just fit them into the left-over minutes if I can.

A Lesson From Legion

One of Jesus’ most interesting miracles is when he cast out devils who calls themselves Legion from a man and they request to be sent into a herd of swine. There are so many things we learn from this miracle, but what intrigues me the most is that after the miracle. Before the miracle all the people knew of the crazy man who was chained and held in a cave because he was so wild. They had seen him naked and hurting himself and threatening others and they had heard him rant and rave and bellow. And after Jesus mercifully casts out the devils, they see the man clothed and calmly eating. Yet what do they do? They ask Jesus to leave.

We are not told why they ask the Savior to leave but one suspects that it has something to do with the loss of the swine that ran into the sea and were drowned. In other words, they are more concerned with their material welfare than they are with their spiritual.

At first this may seem absurd, but each of us has to ask ourselves if we put material comfort and wealth ahead of spiritual welfare. Are we more concerned with getting the tasks of life done each day or with reading our scriptures? Are we more interested in increasing our spirituality or our bank account? It is a matter of priority and it is a choice that we make daily.

We must watch that we like the people of Gadara don’t do things that in essence are asking Jesus to leave.