Of Mice and Men

I was once asked to be Mr Bunny for a morning at my workplace, sometime around Easter, as I recall. My brief was simple: wear a bunny suit and hand out Easter eggs to the employees during morning tea.

However, once I’d zipped into the furry white suit, which stood two metres tall, I realised I was experiencing a mischief-maker’s dream: anonymity. This opened up a bag full of sugar-coated carrots and Mr Bunny became cheekier as time progressed.

Easter eggs were distributed playfully to each person, with more and more eggs ending up on the floor than in the recipient’s hands. In between handouts, a gorging of eggs was had by Mr Bunny, with about the same disregard of manners as that of Cookie Monster.

Sadly, and all too soon, the time came for my freedom to end. But it did so with a better appreciation of the people who dress as the world famous rodent of Disneyland.

There must be an amazing upside to dressing up. While you may be near broke, while friends and family may not be living up to your expectations or you feel guilty about your nasty habits or past wrongs, suiting up as Mickey Mouse changes everything.

In an instant, you own property all around the world (complete with castles, roller-coasters and princesses), you have super-cheerful friends and family, a loyal pet named after what used to be a planet and you’ve donned an innocent, yet confident personality.

At least, this is how people outside your rodent regalia see you. Kids and adults alike approach you, faces alight with joy and plead for a photo, autograph or even a hug. Technically, you’re not even real. But forget inconvenient truth—you’re amazingly popular, super famous and incredibly well-loved.

The problem, of course, is like that of Mr Bunny’s. The suit has to come off sooner or later (for hygiene reasons, if none other) and once that happens, you return to all the woes in your life that you thought you’d left behind.

But there is another suit we can put on that is real. The Bible suggests that this costume covers our personality problems and sinful self-loathing, and makes us worthy of eternal life: “For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10).

It’s a costume that need never come off and that’s important because “all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). That’s how miserably attired we really are—even when we dress to impress.

The good news is that this costume is available to us through Jesus, because of His death on the cross, the real reason for Easter.

So essentially it comes down to this: we are all sinners (with dirty clothes) and should die for our sins. However, Jesus is perfect (clean robe) and His death is payment, if we accept it as such. When we accept, we have access to His clean record and are accepted as residents of heaven (see Romans 3:23–25).

While Disney may have provided costumes to transform us temporarily, Jesus has a royal robe on offer that will transform us into someone eternally perfect.