“He wants us to be fair, just, merciful, and to walk humbly with God." ~ Micah 6:8
Since her earliest memories,
Samantha carried her Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal everywhere. She’d always had this kinship for that
yellow, hunny-craving bear. Perhaps it
had to do with the honey … or maybe the way he used language. The goodness of each beckoned her longer than
she could remember.
A dear friend once gave her a
hardbound book of the complete tales of Pooh Bear (A.A. Milne). She often read Pooh stories to her boys
before bedtime. They loved how Pooh went
to great lengths to find just a small “smackerel” of food, including rolling in
mud, and piloting a balloon up a tree to fool the bees and get the honey.
In tonight’s adventure, Pooh
devises a clever trap to capture a “heffalump” (a honey-eating elephant that Tigger
endearingly mispronounces). Pooh decides
to lure a heffalump into a deep hole with a jar of honey at the bottom for bait. Piglet agrees to dig while Pooh goes off to
retrieve some honey from his pantry.
He takes a pot of “hunny” from
the shelf and examines its contents. Sure
enough - rich, golden sweetness with a taste of wildflowers!
“Unless of course,” Pooh imagined, “somebody put cheese at
the bottom as a joke. Perhaps I’d better
dig a little further down.” And so, he licked
further into the pot.
Then a little bit further. Then a little bit further until, a few minutes
later, there was no honey left in the pot. “I was right, after all,” he declared with a
deep sigh. “It was hunny all the way
down.”
The boy’s laughter expressed pure joy, with a beauty that
was both vulnerable and honest. Samantha
admired their bubbly sort of charisma; that silly ole’ bear made her chuckle
too.
She still enjoyed reading those original Pooh stories. But
there’s much more wisdom to be found in their pages than she ever gleaned as a
child.
What matters most to Pooh is what’s deep down; something he
thinks you ought to know about.
Jesus held the same view! His harshest words in the New Testament were
leveled against the Pharisees, who were outwardly pious but whose hearts were
unloving.
Jesus preached the transformation of the human heart. He didn’t want you to go to church more, sing
more hymns, memorize more bible verses. Religious
activities like were tools but they aren’t the point! Rather, He wants us to become people who, from
top to bottom, are like Him - kind, loving, forgiving, helpful, obedient,
honest, and thankful.
