After the holidays, the kind lady of the parsonage and I enjoyed taking a day or two off and just relaxing. We like to sit and tell stories.

My wife often starts off by saying, “Hey, remember the time when …” and continues with a story that I had forgotten. When it ends, we laugh together.

Then it’s my turn and I start, “Hey, do you remember the time when …?” And I go on and tell a story that she may have forgotten, I really don’t know. When I’m done, we laugh together like it’s the funniest thing we’ve heard all day.

It is our way of relaxing and disconnecting after a vacation. Holidays are very busy times for us, we like them, but they take a little away from us. It seems that the older we get, the more it takes from us. I’m not really sure what that means. Don’t tell me what it means!

Usually we continue our stories until we are too tired to tell a story or laugh.

On this last vacation, the kind lady of the parsonage came up with a story that she had long forgotten. In fact, I’m not sure the details of her story match the truth, but who am I to contradict it?

“Do you remember the time,” he said quite seriously, “when the Easter Bunny ran away?”

I had to stop and think a bit because it wasn’t in any of my memory files.

Then he began to relax the story.

As he recalls, he was going to do a little magic trick for the children before they were dismissed from morning service. I was going to pull a bunny out of a hat. I practiced quite a bit and thought I had everything covered.

By now, you should know that when you know you have everything covered, there is something that defies your observation.

I had all the children come to the front so they could see the wonderful magic trick I had in store for them. I began by telling you the story of the resurrection of Jesus.

According to my wife, I was in the middle of telling the story when Mrs. Steward yelled from the back of the congregation, “There is a rat in the church.” With that, he jumped on top of the bench and did his famous dance of fear. You don’t want to see it. All the time he was yelling, “Rat, rat, rat.”

It was enough to make the entire congregation stand up yelling, “Where’s the rat?”

Having a rat in church is not a good thing. I don’t know how a rat can get into church unless he’s elected to the board.

There was so much uproar in the church auditorium that we couldn’t really go through with the service. I didn’t really know what to do because we hadn’t yet accepted the offering. Whatever happens after the offering is fine.

At this point I couldn’t get the kids’ attention because they were standing on top of the bench looking back, wondering where in the world the rat was or where it came from.

I got one of my elders to come back and try to fix the situation. I’ve never had a rat in church before.

After a few minutes, my elder found the “rat” and caught it. The “rat” turned out to be the bunny he was supposed to have in his hat with which he was going to surprise the children.

How that Bunny came out of the box I put him in remains something that puzzles me to this day.

The older one picked up the white bunny and said to everyone, “Okay, it’s not a rat, it’s a bunny. A bunny can’t hurt anyone.”

The entire congregation, including Ms. Steward, sat on her bench and laughed and laughed as she clapped for the old man who saved the day. I even laughed and applauded myself.

I did not know what to do now that my magic trick went out the window, it was difficult to attract the attention of the little ones. Finally I dismissed them to their classes and tried to regain some level of sanity in the congregation.

I don’t remember what my sermon was that day, but I do remember that there was a lot of laughs throughout my sermon. I’m not sure anyone was listening to my sermon. I was tempted to preach the sermon next Sunday, but it wasn’t Easter Sunday. I could keep it until next year, which is probably what I did.

Sometimes things are not always what they seem. The challenge is in the middle of the confusion to find what is really true.

Perhaps this is what Solomon was thinking about when he said, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12).

There is a big difference between a bunny and a rat. Sometimes we confuse them and in that confusion, we cause alarm. I want to be able to differentiate between the Bunny element and the rat element in my life so that I can have peace and quiet.