One of my favorite scenes in that cute movie, Peter Rabbit (2018), is when the deer is caught in the headlights of an automobile.
He stares and repeats in a soft, mesmerized-like voice, “HeAd LiGhTs.”
Peter Rabbit urges him to snap out of it: “Blink…blink…blink, blink, blink, blink, blink.”
When the deer remains in his trance, Peter leaps on the deer’s neck and waves his hands before the deer’s motionless eyes. “C’mon, big guy, blink.” With the rest of Peter’s rabbit family, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton Tail, wrapping their arms around the deer’s legs, they push him forward, in slow-motion, while the deer remains fixated on those headlights. Peter soothes his companion, “C’mon, dear,” as if this is not the first time this has happened.
Thank the Lord for friends like Peter Rabbit.
I know what it is to be mesmerized by The Enemy’s Headlights.
If you are honest with yourself, you do, too.
And if you aren’t, if you insist on cloaking yourself in the false bravado of your personal, self-proclaimed goodness, maybe you should recall that the only perfect one who ever walked this earth found his closet friends among those whose eyes got caught in the headlights.
Though the Savior, he is yet a friend, and what a friend we have in Jesus.
He befriended Simon Peter, for instance, who got caught in the headlights of fear. Jesus did the same for Thomas, who so wavered in faith that they dubbed him “Doubting Thomas.” Then there was Matthew, who was mesmerized by the lure of more, even if “more” meant cheating his fellow Israelites to get it. Yet, despite the ridicule of the do-gooders, Jesus dined with Matthew.
As for the rest of Jesus’ comrades, they too were bound by the headlights of their selves. Try reading that sad scene we call “The Last Supper,” where every last one of them jockeyed for positions in the Kingdom to come rather than serving at the table that was. Jesus himself was the friend who knelt on his knees and washed the disciples’ filthy feet that night. When the religious authorities seized Jesus, his followers opted-out, choosing the temporary light of self-security rather than the eternal, freeing Light of Life.
Nothing but the resurrection Light of Jesus could snap them out of their stupor. Later, that very same light would dazzle Saul, who, once freed from the constraining headlights of the religious law, would be known as the Apostle Paul.
We sometimes need friends to guide us away from the headlights, even though those headlights still enrapture us. We want freedom, but not yet. That “in-between time,” that space between moving from the Enemy’s Light into the Healing Light can be fragile. For Paul, help came from an obscure man named Ananias, who tenderly took care of Paul until his sight was restored.
Having been saved from the headlights, what about being a friend? If Peter Rabbit could do it, why not you?
But let me warn you, friends may come from unexpected places.
A herd of deer, 14 to be exact, warily crossed the field behind our house last night.
They were beautiful, and free, and elegant, as they left their tracks in the snow-covered ground. Then, hearing a barking dog, they bolted, escaping in a chorographical dance that could have rivaled a Broadway ballet.
“What if I had a spotlight to draw them in, so I can get closer to them?” I think I said aloud.
In his The Life of Blessed Francis, Francis Bonaventure wrote this about Francis of Assisi, “Francis would call creatures, no matter how small, by the name of ‘brother’ or ‘sister,’ because he knew they shared with him the same beginning.”
No, I wouldn’t shine the headlights into the eyes of those deer, even if I could.
Or any creature or any being.
That’s because it is for freedom that I have been set free from the headlights.