Sunday bunny - a young Honey Bunny

I'm feeling paranoid about taking the camera out of my hospital bag now, as I don't want to forget it or the memory card when we go in. With baby now a week overdue, we will be needing it soon.

There are some impressive excavations in the backyard, however I won't be photographing them. Andrew has reached down the hole with a garden stake, and it is now nearly 2 metres long, and wide enough to turn around in. It is angled downwards, so the design aim seems to be an extension of bunny living quarters, rather than escape.

Anyway, this is Sunday bunny, and without further ado, here is a picture of Honey Bunny from her youth.


Posts will almost certainly become more irregular from here on in, at least for a while.

Sunday bunny - angled Honey Bunny

Sunday bunny - the excavations continue

The hole is deeper...


one can only just make out a tail when they're all the way down...
(right hand side of pic in the middle)


This is Koko Black exiting bottom first, obviously there isn't enough space at the end of the burrow to turn around yet...

my God is so big

I've been slowly making my way through chronological readings of the Old Testament and have now reached the book of Daniel. While it contains some spooky and weird stuff, for which I've been getting a bit of interpretation help from a basic commentary, there is one theme that stands out clearly and prominently...

God is powerful.

He shuts the mouths of lions (Dan 6), he can bring the mightiest ruler low (Dan 4), he can even sustain strapping young men on a diet of vegetables (Dan 1)! He rules everyone and everything (Dan 7:11-14).

Sometimes I feel uncomfortable focussing my thoughts on God's power, because I don't want to presume that he will exercise it on my behalf in the ways that I want to prescribe for him. He isn't a magic genie god after all (Dan 3:16-18).

However, it's enormously encouraging to know that God is more powerful than anyone or anything else in the universe. He's more powerful than the people whose approval I crave, he's more powerful than the people who are able to harm me or disrupt my life, he is able to exercise his strength in the situations that I feel hopeless about. Above all, he has exercised his power to save me in Christ (Eph 1:17-21).

What a great gift and privilege it is to know and be able to pray to our powerful God.

Sunday bunny - tunnelling

There's nothing like rain softened earth and mild temperatures to bring out the tunnellers...

ouch

One of the fun aspects of being pregnant is interpreting the movements of my baby. This is a highly subjective process that is easily worked to my advantage. If the baby moves while I'm eating chocolate, obviously baby enjoys chocolate and would like some more. (Of course if I'm honest, most of the time I have no idea what the movements really mean - other than knowing that baby wants to move his/her limbs.)

A night or two ago, I work up at 4.30am absolutely ravenous. This isn't that unusual, and normally I get up and eat a banana or a couple of dried biscuits and go back to sleep. Except this time I decided that I really couldn't be bothered getting up and tried to just go back to sleep. At this baby moved, and it wasn't just the usual gentle kicking - it really hurt! So I took the hint, got up, and ate something and baby settled right back down again.

I hope this isn't a sign of things to come...

Friday Proverb - the fridge man

Recently Andrew and I purchased a new fridge in anticipation of our soon to be expanded family. His old "bachelor fridge" that he brought into our marriage was barely big enough for the two of us, and required creative stacking when we entertained, so we concluded that it was time to upsize.

As sometimes happens with new appliances, our new fridge wasn't everything we hoped it would be - the vegies kept on freezing. Bad news for us and our furry friends in the backyard. So we rang the manufacturer, and the fridge man came to take care of things for us.

Although the fridge man eventually proved to be an able mechanic, he did not score highly in the emotional intelligence department. He didn't really communicate well, disappeared mysteriously for a while (though when he returned he smelled strongly of cigarette smoke), and was quite rude and arrogant in his manner.

Now here is where we turn to what I should have done in response, which contrasts somewhat with what I actually did. Proverbs 12:16 says:

Fools show their annoyance at once, but the prudent overlook an insult.

Given the fridge man's obvious competence in the matter of repairing fridges, I should have just left him to it. Andrew, who is a more even tempered individual than me, was at home and was happy to deal with him.

However, I stayed, showed my annoyance, argued with the fridge man and then stormed out into the backyard. Those who know me personally may think this out of character, although one or two who know me very closely may not be surprised at all.

There are moments in life when it is much better to overlook insulting behaviour, especially for the sake of the gospel. When the fridge man came into our house, he would have seen a large cross over the doorway that goes into our kitchen, a pile of Bibles on the coffee table, and numerous missionary prayer cards on our fridge. How much better would it have been had he also seen an example of Christian patience and love at work.

Hopefully I will do better the next time something like that happens. Thankfully, God's grace to me in Christ is more than big enough to deal with my ungracious behaviour.