Photo and Commentary ©2025 by Shelley Schurch
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Was he guilty of soliciting? No. Loitering? No. He paused to pose for a few Private Property photos, but didn’t loiter or linger (or even litter, which the sign did not prohibit). Did he trespass? Yes, definitely, yes!
This bunny rabbit trespassed all over the place – merrily hopping from one garden and lawn to another. He even crossed the street without looking both ways.
It seemed a bit bold of him to pose by the Private Property sign with all its prohibitions, but this happened to be Easter afternoon. Perhaps he was the Easter Bunny and, as such, felt he was welcome everywhere.
I enjoy experiencing a delayed reaction to a photo I’ve taken. Perhaps I’m easily surprised and pleased, and also slow on the uptake! I thought I’d absorbed all there was to notice in this photo that I took more than a month ago – but yesterday I suddenly saw a connection I’d overlooked. And, believe it or not, it has to do with one of Aesop’s Fables and a verse in Ecclesiastes!
The rabbit is not the only critter in my photo; he’s cozied up to a couple of unnaturally white turtles. And suddenly I thought back many, many years ago to one of my elementary school readers, where I read Aesop’s Fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare.”
The story in brief: The tortoise grows tired of the hare always making fun of him for being so slow, so he challenges him to a race. The hare easily takes a long lead, and is so confident that he’ll win the race that he decides to take a wee nap. While his nap stretches on, the tortoise plods ahead, overtakes him, and is approaching the finish line when the hare wakes up and runs as fast as he can, but the tortoise crosses the finish line first.
The moral of the story? I think it clearly is, “You snooze, you lose!” but it’s usually given as, “Slow and steady wins the race.” (Which I think is only true if your speedy competitor is overconfident and/or arrogant and thus loses the race that he could have easily won.)
However, Aesop concluded this fable with the moral, “The race is not always to the swiftest.”
Readers of Ecclesiastes might be hearing a close echo of the second line of chapter 9, verse 11:
I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong . . .
The verse continues:
. . . nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance
happen to them all.
In this verse I hear the author cautioning us that we should not jump to conclusions; those among us who seem most favored are not guaranteed to be the world’s winners.
And if I look at this verse again in a month or so, I will probably notice something that I’ve overlooked in it! I will be surprised and pleased at my double take!
One of my college friends astonished me by claiming not to re-read books. One reason I was surprised was that, on a college student’s budget, she bought only hardcover books, not the cheaper paperbacks. And she loved to read.
One book she did re-read was her Bible. It’s not a book to read once through and put on a high shelf or sell, because you’ve read all the print from Genesis through Revelation and there’s nothing more to absorb from it. And yet sometimes I approach a Bible story with the unhelpful attitude of knowing I know the story. I’ve read it, and re-read it. I’ve heard it preached. I may have memorized a line or two from it. Ho, hum – time for a wee nap.
Wait – what’s the moral of that story? You snooze, you lose . . .
And here’s where I say, “Thank You, Jesus, for giving us the best possible gift when you ascended back to heaven — our Holy Spirit Teacher, Comforter, Convicter, Guide, Counselor, Reminderer! Please open my eyes, my ears, my mind, my heart to what I need to hear afresh in Your Word.”