photo #8725825

You're five years old chasing a white rabbit. Blink. You're thirty-five and the rabbit is chasing you. The White Rabbit is always late. Always running. Always checking his pocket watch. You followed him down the hole thinking it was adventure. Turns out it was just Thursday. Here's what nobody tells you about growing up: You don't walk into adulthood. You fall. Down a rabbit hole that keeps getting deeper. And at the bottom? A tea party where everyone's mad and the clock never stops ticking. You remember being a kid? Time moved like honey. Summer lasted forever. Christmas took years to arrive. Now? January was last week. Your daughter's graduation was yesterday. Your dad's funeral was this morning. The rabbit keeps running. You try to host your tea party anyway. Set the table. Pour the tea. Smile at your guests. Meanwhile: Your mother's forgetting your name. Your brother's drowning in pills. Your friend's marriage just imploded. Your son's asking questions you don't have answers for. The teacups are shaking. The rabbit's digging holes everywhere. Holes in your bank account. Holes in your calendar. Holes in the people you love. You keep pouring tea and pretending it's fine. "Everything's fine." "We're all fine." "This is fine." The Mad Hatter's laughing. He knows. You watch your loved ones at that table: Your wife, exhausted from keeping everyone else's tea from spilling. Your kids, growing so fast you can't remember what they looked like yesterday. Your parents, suddenly old, suddenly fragile, suddenly counting down their own white rabbits. They're all suffering their own wonderlands. All falling down their own holes. All chasing their own rabbits. And you? You're trying to host a tea party in a place where nothing makes sense. Where up is down. Where time speeds up when you beg it to slow down. Where everyone's mad and nobody admits it. The rabbit keeps digging. Dig, dig, dig. New holes every day: Another bill. Another crisis. Another thing that needs fixing. Another person who needs you. Another deadline. Another funeral. Another birthday you can't believe is here already. The rabbit's working for the Queen. And the Queen is time. And she's screaming "Off with your head!" every single day. You're running out of moves. The tea party is chaos. The rabbit won't stop. The holes keep getting deeper. Here's the secret they don't tell you: You were never meant to catch the rabbit. Time isn't the enemy. The tea party isn't the point. The hole isn't the problem. The problem is you're in Wonderland acting like you're in the real world. You're trying to make sense of something that was never designed to make sense. Christianity doesn't promise you'll catch the rabbit. It promises the rabbit doesn't matter. "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?" You're chasing time. God's chasing you. You're digging holes trying to bury your fears. He's digging you out of the grave. You're hosting a tea party for people you can't save. He already hosted the table that actually saves them. Your dad's dying? The rabbit can't touch eternity. Your kids are growing? They were never yours to keep. Your friends are suffering? The tea party was never your job to fix. You know what the White Rabbit represents? The lie that you have control. The lie that if you just run faster, work harder, plan better, you'll catch up. The lie that the tea party depends on you. It doesn't. It never did. You're not the host. You're a guest. At a table you didn't set. With a time you can't control. In a story you didn't write. The rabbit will keep running. The holes will keep opening. The people you love will keep suffering and succeeding and suffering again. That's Wonderland. That's mortality. That's the cost of loving people who die. But here's what breaks the spell: The moment you stop chasing the rabbit and start chasing the Rabbit Hole's Designer. The moment you stop hosting the tea party and sit down at the real Table. The moment you realize: Time isn't the enemy. Wasted time is. And you've been wasting it running after a white rabbit who was never going to stop. Solomon chased the rabbit. He caught everything the rabbit promised: Wealth. Women. Wisdom. Power. "Vanity of vanities. All is vanity." Even the smartest man alive realized: The rabbit's a liar. Your father's watching his clock wind down. Your son's watching his start. You're somewhere in the middle, running. Stop running. The tea party will be chaos whether you're there or not. The rabbit will dig holes until the day you die. The people you love will suffer. That's not the question. The question is: When you fall down the hole—because you will— Whose voice do you hear at the bottom? The White Rabbit screaming you're late? Or the Savior saying you're right on time? You can't control the clock. You can't stop the suffering. You can't host the perfect tea party. But you can stop pretending you're supposed to. Religion says: "Run faster. Dig better. Fix everyone." Discipleship says: "Put down the shovel. Leave the rabbit. Come to the Table." The White Rabbit is still running. Let him. —TBM