A Rabbit's Journey with Lessons for Us All

I recently came across a rather unusual love story in the latest issue of Harvard Magazine.* It begins with Petunia, who had lost her longtime partner, Oliver. We meet her riding in the car with her family on the way to a speed-dating event. It’s not uncommon for loved ones to encourage someone to find love again after a loss. But you should know that Petunia is a pet rabbit—and yes, there are dating services for rabbits.

Domesticated rabbits form lifelong bonds. They eat, sleep, and play together every day. Bonded rabbits rarely stray more than a few feet from one another and spend hours cuddling. As the article notes, they even poop side by side. Rabbits who live with a bonded companion are not only happier but also healthier. They are less prone to illness and stress. Based on the research, Switzerland decided to make it illegal to keep certain social animals, including rabbits, without a companion of their own species. If this sounds strangely familiar, the author suggests, it's because it mirrors something fundamental about the human condition. We are also wired for connection and don’t do very well without it.

But back to Petunia for a moment, and her search for what’s known in the rabbit world as a new "husbun." Her family carefully screened potential matches, reading their profiles and arranging introductions at a local rabbit rescue. Petunia, who was still grieving, and also just plain sassy, swiftly rejected them one by one. With each passing date, friends and family became more invested in her love life as if they were watching The Bachelorette. "Tell me everything," they would say to her humans after a visit.

Then Petunia met Spruce, a rabbit she didn't immediately hate. For rabbits, that was an encouraging start. Her people were patient, and a year later they were inseparable.

Love is in the air this morning—not only for Petunia, but also in our scriptures. In Genesis, we hear how Isaac met his wife Rebekah, a story that Hannah once described as a biblical meet-cute. How they met was not particularly unusual; marriages were often arranged in those days. What is unusual is that scripture pauses to tell us that Isaac loved Rebekah. That detail almost seems unnecessary. After all, the point of the story is the continuation of God's covenant with Abraham through the next generation. The family line would continue whether or not we knew how Isaac felt. But scripture tells us anyway. We should see flashing lights and a big arrow pointing to this moment in the text. Love is not incidental to God's saving work. It is a key part of our salvation story.

Then we hear those beautiful words from the Song of Solomon, a hymn to love: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” You should know that this passage is rather tame compared to some of the others in the book. In fact, it's remarkable that the Song of Solomon made it into the Bible at all. God is never mentioned in it. Instead, we find a collection of love poems between two young lovers utterly captivated by one another. For centuries, interpreters insisted it had to be read symbolically, as a love story between God and Israel or Christ and the Church. The early church fathers even argued that only the most spiritually advanced should read it, those capable of looking beyond the passion to its deeper meaning.

But perhaps we need not choose between those readings. The Song is a joyful celebration of human love, desire, beauty, and delight. Those, too, are holy things. The book invites us to discover something transcendent through the ordinary joys of embodied life. The famous Rabbi Akiva praised the book with these words: “The whole world is not worth the day on which the Song of Solomon was given to Israel; for all the Writings are holy, but the Song of Solomon is the holiest of the holy.” I take that to mean that the love we experience in this life, romantic and otherwise, participates, in some mysterious way, in the holiest of the holy, in the heart of God.

But as beautiful as love is, we also know that love stories don't always unfold in carefree youth and springtime. Sometimes they unfold in grief, exhaustion, disappointment, and loneliness. Perhaps that's why Jesus' words in today's Gospel feel so deeply comforting: "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." The compassion woven into those words is part of God's ongoing love story with us, especially when life becomes difficult. Jesus does not promise a life free from burdens. He does promise that we will not carry them alone. He offers an invitation into a relationship with Christ that brings us into community, into the body of Christ.

I was talking with a friend the other day who was trying to put into words what he called "the malaise in the air." He wondered if our collective mood comes from the constant stream of headlines on our phones, or anxiety about a warming planet, or simply the accumulation of years of disruption and uncertainty. For a while now, we’ve been hearing about an epidemic of loneliness. This week I saw a headline declaring a friendship recession. Writer and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams has spoken recently of "long COVID" as a metaphor for the lingering emotional and spiritual fatigue many people carry. Whatever we decide to call how we’re feeling, people seem weary.

There is good news. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been exploring what makes human lives flourish since 1938, has reached a remarkably simple conclusion: good relationships are the single greatest predictor of healthy, happy lives, outweighing wealth, fame, and even intelligence. And the benefit extends well beyond romance. As one of the study's lead researchers puts it, "It's really about the quality of connection.” In a way, the Harvard study has rediscovered something Scripture and the Church have been saying all along.

That truth is echoed throughout our salvation story. From Isaac and Rebekah, to the lovers in the Song of Solomon, to Jesus' invitation, "Come to me," Scripture tells the story of a God who desires communion with us and who teaches us to live in communion with one another. The Church exists to make that love visible. It is where strangers become neighbors, burdens are shared, forgiveness is practiced, and weary souls find companions for the journey. Christ's compassion is not merely something we admire from a distance. It is something we receive—and something we extend to one another in the Body of Christ.

At the end of Petunia’s story, the author concludes that “it is not time that heals us, but other people. Or, for Petunia and Spruce, other rabbits.” It turns out that rabbits knew something all along that God has been teaching us from the beginning: we are created for communion—with God, and with one another.

*Lydialyle Gibson, “Love story - A Rabbit’s Journey from Loss to Love Has Lessons for Us All,” Harvard Magazine, July-August 2026.