But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” —Luke 11:28

Allie, my youngest granddaughter, has a little rabbit called Fuzzie (named by her older sister, Rylie). Fuzzie lives in a fairly large cage. I know it seems unfair to put a rabbit in a cage, but it is a pretty nice cage as cages go. I actually think Fuzzie likes his cage.

Allie doesn’t yet know the proper protocol for handling a rabbit. So when she takes Fuzzie out of his cage, sometimes she grabs him by the head, and we’ll say, “No, Allie, support his bottom now.” But Allie loves Fuzzie, and she squeals with delight every time he comes out of his cage. After she has had some fun with him, Fuzzie is ready to go back into his home. How do I know this? Because once when I was carrying him back to his cage, while I was still about three feet away, Fuzzie leaped out of my arms and through the cage’s open door. He ran over to the corner of the cage, as if to say, “I am so happy now!” And I promptly closed the door.

Now some people might think, That poor rabbit. The cage is keeping him confined! But Fuzzie would say, “No, the cage keeps Allie out.”

Sometimes people see God’s Word the same way. They would say, “The Bible, with all of its absolutes and commandments, is keeping us from having fun. It is keeping us from living life to its fullest!”

But actually it is the very opposite of that. A smart person knows that when the Word of God tells us not to do something, it is for our own good.

As Martin Luther said, “The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.”