Thomas McGregor is a self-centered department store employee who wants only one thing out of life: to climb the corporate ladder.

Of course, life rarely goes as planned.

It started going downhill when he learned that the company slackie got the much-coveted promotion. Then, Thomas discovered that a great uncle (“Mr. McGregor”) passed away and left him a rural cottage. He hates the countryside. Soon thereafter, he got fired.

So instead of designing picturesque displays in big-city store aisles, he’s now cleaning up an old house and tending to an out-of-control garden. And we haven’t even mentioned the rabbits. There are five of them, including one who has a mischievous streak. Thomas hates rabbits.

Yet these cute-and-furry-creatures live with the next-door neighbor Bea, an animal lover who just happens to be single. Thomas and Bea surely would make a good couple – that is, if he doesn’t kill her pets first.

It’s all part of the new film Peter Rabbit (PG), which is out in theaters this weekend and stars Domhnall Gleeson (The Last Jedi) as Thomas, Rose Byrne (X-Men: Apocalypse, Annie) as Bea, James Corden (The Late Late Show) as Peter Rabbit, Daisy Ridley (The Last Jedi) as Cottontail, Margot Robbie (The Legend of Tarzan) as Flopsy, and Elizabeth Debicki (Guardians of the Galaxy) as Mopsy.

The film is based on the books by Beatrix Potter and – like Paddington — features computer-generated animals interacting in the real world. Peter Rabbit is not as squeaky-clean as Paddington or Paddington 2, but nevertheless stays within the family-friendly realm and provides a story that most families will welcome. It’s far more wholesome than the majority of animated films. It’s also funny.

Still, it does contain slapstick humor similar to that in Home Alone, even if it includes a redemptive and positive ending.

Warning: minor/moderate spoilers!

Violence/Disturbing

Moderate. Gardeners chase rabbits around the garden with a rake and hoe, and set traps for them. Someone dies of a heart attack. We learn that Peter’s father was killed by Mr. McGregor and that his mother passed away, too. Peter claims he killed Mr. McGregor. Someone tries to kill the rabbits with dynamite. A rabbit and a human character fight. An electric fence is set up to kill the rabbits, but it backfires. The rabbits set traps throughout the house for a human character, and he falls for all of them. The rabbits tie the electric fence current to doorknobs.    

Sexuality/Sensuality/Nudity

Minimal. Thomas and Bea obviously like one another, but we see them kiss (briefly) only once. Thomas tells her he loves her. We see the top of a man’s bottom, and a rabbit places a carrot in his underwear. We briefly see Thomas without a shirt and also in his boxers. (Neither scene involves Bea.) The rabbits joke that one of the rabbits appears to be naked when he wears a brown shirt.  

Coarse Language

None. We hear “nipples” (1), “flatulent” (1), “butt” (2) and “naked.”

Other Positive Elements

We learn that Peter’s parents cared deeply for him and his three sisters. Bea turns the curmudgeon Thomas into a lover of nature.  

Other Stuff You Might Want To Know

We discover that Thomas’ parents died and he was placed in a group home. A pig says about Peter Rabbit: “All hail the prodigal son.”

Thomas is allergic to blackberries – a fact that Peter Rabbit and his friends know all about. So, they pelt him with blackberries until one lands in his mouth, sparking an allergic reaction that forces him to use an EpiPen. He nevertheless passes out and wakes up in the middle of the night. It’s a scene that should not have been included in a children’s film – especially when many of the children watching it either have a food allergy or know someone who does. With a life-or-death issue like this, it’s no laughing matter.

Life Lessons

Peter Rabbit gives us solid lessons on repentance (Peter Rabbit himself, Thomas), humility (Peter Rabbit, Thomas), forgiveness (Bea) and self-sacrifice (Thomas, the rabbits),  

Worldview

I must admit: Halfway through Peter Rabbit, I was concerned. The message was muddled: Rabbits should be given free reign in our gardens, and if we don’t acquiesce, they have the moral freedom to declare war and do whatever is necessary.

But slowly, the story changed. And by the end, our naughty little rabbit was seeing the error of his ways. I won’t give away the ending, but it’s not difficult to turn Peter Rabbit into a moral tale about repentance, forgiveness and second chances – lessons straight from Scripture. Not bad for a story about rabbits.

Discussion Questions

1. What caused Peter Rabbit to repent? What caused Thomas to repent? Why did they not see their errors until it was nearly too late?
2. What can we learn about forgiveness from Peter Rabbit’s story?  
3. Did Peter Rabbit and Thomas deserve a second chance? Why or why not?
4. Was Thomas’ attitude about rabbits and animals wrong? Why or why not?
5. Is it OK to harm animals to keep them from our gardens/crops?   

Entertainment rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars. Family-friendly rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Peter Rabbit is rated PG for some rude humor and action.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska  Alaska is “in dire need of committed pastors to serve Christ,” said Rob Scott, who never lived outside North Carolina before attending Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky.

Scott, who has been in a remote area of Alaska since 2009 as pastor of Dillingham Bible Fellowship, moved to the state because “it’s a place that prefers function to form, and that’s a fairly good description of me, too. I am here because there are too few presently serving Christ in rural Alaska.”

While there are “innumerable rewards” in serving in Alaska, the challenges must not be underestimated, Scott said.

As a pastor in the bush, he has been called upon to serve as a mortician and a grave digger. “Until you dig a 6-foot hole in frozen ground, you haven’t faced adversity.”

But being fitted for a ministry task and then accomplishing it is fulfilling, Scott said. “Progress has come slowly, but it is rewarding to have seen progress at all.”

Mark Goodman, pastor of Rabbit Creek Church in Anchorage, grew up in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and graduated from Baylor University—yet Alaska has been his mission field for 16 years.

“Pastoring in Alaska requires an openness to adjustments,” Goodman told Baptist Press, acknowledging that the winters are “long, cold and dark. The distance is quite far from the lower 48, requiring expensive travel to visit family and friends. The population is highly transient, so one has to expect the relocation of friends to other states.”

But he “absolutely loves serving in Alaska.”

“Much reward exists when men, women and children choose to follow Jesus, especially since most Alaskans are not Christian and are unchurched. While the transient nature of Alaska tends to allow for shortened stays for newly-made friends, it also leads to the opportunity to meet new people on a regular basis, offering regular ministry opportunities,” Goodman said.

“The Alaskan people are friendly. It is rewarding to see God’s beautiful creation: mountains, oceans, moose, brown and black bears, salmon, halibut, Dall sheep and much more. The nearly-all-day-and-night sunshine summers are quite a treat.”

Randy Covington, executive director of the Alaska Baptist Convention, concurs that Alaska requires an adventuresome spirit in a sportsman’s paradise.

“Summers are short but beautiful, and the daylight hours are long, which is conducive to getting out of doors and enjoying the beauty. On the flipside, winters are long, the days are short with little sunshine and the cold temperatures force people to remain indoors most of the time,” said Covington, who grew up in Alaska.

“Usually the men adjust well to the conditions, but wives and children find it much harder. Eventually everyone begins to feel the isolation and distance from family in the lower 48.”

The pastors and their families who remain “are motivated by the commitment to the call to serve the Lord regardless of the harsh and difficult circumstances,” Covington said.

In the course of a year, Covington receives up to 30 resumes from pastoral candidates in southern states, but only two or three ever make it to Alaska, the nation’s largest and most sparsely populated state.

Churches in Alaska are “doubtful about calling a pastor from the South to serve in Alaska,” Covington said. “Most of them have seen many pastors come and go with very short tenures. Their search usually begins within the state, but qualified candidates in-state are pretty rare.”

Goodman advises potential pastors to invest in good outdoor gear and learn to enjoy winter activities like downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, ice fishing, snowshoeing, fat tire biking and snow machining.

There are ways to cope with the long winters, said Goodman, who is married with three children. Before he moved to Alaska, a friend advised him to join a gym.

“Those were wise words,” he said. “Anyone moving to Alaska needs to stay physically active and commit to a healthy lifestyle. Those commitments help individuals cope with dark winter days.”

Scott sees a high level of spiritual apathy among Alaskans, and few areas of the United States value social isolation as much as Alaska. Difficulty in outreach is “easily the most mentioned challenge in my conversations with pastors across the state,” he said.

In bush communities such the one Scott serves, the cost of living is significant because of the freight cost for every item consumed. Dillingham is a hub community served by barges from June to September, “which is fortunate,” Scott said. “Otherwise, all items are delivered air-freight and the cost is approximately $1 per pound to Dillingham from Anchorage.”

In 2009, Scott paid $7.69 per gallon for gasoline, but today it’s $4.29, “and it feels free by comparison.” It’s not uncommon for a wintertime heating bill to be $1,000 per month.

If a person is considering moving to rural Alaska to pastor, it’s almost essential that he is open to being a handyman, Scott said, noting, “Repairing and maintaining normal items falls mostly to the owner. It is simply not possible to call a plumber, electrician, mechanic or carpenter.”

Some rural parts of Alaska can be violent, Scott said. His region suffers from physical and sexual assault, narcotic drug use, alcohol and suicide, but the violence is “altogether perpetrated among family and friends,” so he and his wife and daughter feel safe in their community.

Covington said the state convention has three communities in southeast Alaska—places like Juneau, Petersburg and Sitka—with established churches that are searching for a pastor.

“These cities are remote and are not on the main road system. You can only reach them by boat or plane,” Covington said. “They can only afford a bi-vocational pastor, but job possibilities are very limited, especially if the candidate doesn’t have a marketable skill or vocational training.”

Alaskans are open to hearing a gospel witness, Covington said, recounting a time when he was browsing in a family-owned gun shop.

“The wife approached me and recognized me from the local church. She said she wanted to talk more about getting involved in church. Later, I visited her at home and shared the gospel with her, and she prayed to receive Jesus Christ as her Lord,” Covington said. “She was baptized and began attending regularly when her husband admitted he had become a Christian at an early age, but had not been walking closely with the Lord.

“When he saw her commitment, he was challenged to get his relationship with the Lord right. He had a reputation for sharing amazing hunting and fishing stories with colorful language to customers who frequented their store,” Covington said. “He immediately knew he couldn’t do that anymore, but realized the need to share about his faith. He even began hanging verses of Scripture throughout his store, not the least concerned that he might be alienating these rugged sportsmen.

“Rather than alienating them, he discovered that they wanted to know why he had changed so drastically. He became a strong witness and eventually began serving as a deacon in our church. He was a man’s man but earned the respect of believers and nonbelievers alike. In time, his son and daughter and their spouses became followers of Christ and now their grandchildren are getting involved in international missions.” 

MIDLAND God provided pastor James Salisbury with an exit ramp, a seven-man angel army and a replacement vehicle when his 2002 Chevy Trailblazer burst into flames near Midland on Christmas Eve.

Until then, Salisbury was peacefully making a routine two-and-a-half-hour trip home to Odessa from his bivocational pastorate at Sylvester (Texas) Baptist Church. He didn’t have the radio on because his traveling companions, cats Buddy and Daisy, didn’t like the noise. He wasn’t eating or drinking. He was just intent on getting home to spend Christmas Eve with his wife at a candlelight service at First Baptist Church in Odessa.

“It was about 4 p.m. when everything happened,” Salisbury told the Southern Baptist TEXAN. “I was just focused on staying on the road because traffic was quite heavy on I-20.

“Shortly before the incident I did lose my power steering, but I didn’t associate that with anything but maybe losing a fan belt,” the pastor said. “There was no noise. Then I noticed the alternator gauge showed a discharge on the battery, which was another indication that it was the fan belt.

“I knew if I stopped I might never get it started again, and I wanted to get home,” Salisbury said. “I first saw smoke in my rear-view mirror, and I thought, ‘Is that me?’ And then the engine just quit. No noise. I coasted off an exit ramp to a service road.”

With no brakes, he coasted to a stop and rolled down the driver’s and front passenger windows, but that was the last of the vehicle’s battery power. With the electric door locks engaged, he was unable to exit the small SUV.

“By then I knew I needed to get out,” Salisbury said. “Smoke was coming out from under the hood, and then in through the air conditioning vents. Then flames, orange and yellow.” 

Traffic had stopped well back from the vehicle, which others could see was on fire, but three men exited their vehicles and ran near Salisbury’s.

“Hey, mister, get out!” one of them yelled.

“I can’t!” Salisbury yelled back.

And then, three men ran up to help.

“I’m a big man, 6 foot and 280 pounds. It took all three of them to haul me out the window,” Salisbury said.

By now the front passenger side of the Trailblazer was totally engulfed in a thick black smoke, and flames were licking the front of the vehicle and the driver’s side front wheel well.

Four more men ran up, and one asked, “Is there anything you need from the car?”

“Just my two cats, my insulin and my luggage and Christmas presents,” Salisbury said. 

The men broke windows, retrieved the items, and seconds later the entire car was engulfed in flames. Twenty minutes had passed since he had first noticed there was an issue with the SUV that in 14 years had never given him a problem.

“I can’t really tell you their names because I don’t know who they were,” the pastor said. “Just Dee. He called my wife with his phone.” Salisbury wasn’t thinking about the phone in the pocket of the jacket he was wearing. “I was just concerned for all the people around there, in case the car exploded, because I had half a tank of gas, eight or nine gallons at least.”

The police arrived within five minutes, an ambulance shortly after that, and then the fire department. By then, the fire had melted the rubber off the driver’s side front tire, and what had been a white SUV was now a mottled gray frame.

“Things really didn’t get scary until the next morning, and then it dawned on me how close I had come to going home and being with the Lord,” the 70-year-old Salisbury said.

“I’m just rejoicing at how good God is. He’s wonderful. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and friends from my days at Jacksonville College have just showered me with encouragement, support and love. I’m so thankful. I’m just so thankful.”

James Salisbury, pastor, Sylvester Baptist Church

“I’m just rejoicing at how good God is. He’s wonderful. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and friends from my days at Jacksonville College have just showered me with encouragement, support and love. I’m so thankful. I’m just so thankful.”

From the time he was a teenager, Salisbury has known T.C. Melton, who today is a field consultant in West Texas for the SBTC. “Since surrendering to the ministry in 1968,” Salisbury said, “Bro. T.C. has been an off-and-on mentor in my life and ministry.” When he heard about what Salisbury calls “the incident,” Melton put out the word that a replacement vehicle was needed.

A couple at an SBTC-affiliated church had an extra vehicle and were praying about what God wanted them to do with it. They were able to give it to Salisbury.

“They told me, ‘God bless you,’ and that when they heard of my need they knew right away I was the one to give it to,” Salisbury said. “I just praise God for his goodness and how he has blessed me and my wife Carley. It was far above what I could imagine at the time would come from this incident.

“The Lord just worked it all out,” the pastor said. “It has eight passenger seats, and I couldn’t have asked anything better for ministry. I can use it in taking people to camp or wherever. Whatever the need, I’m more than equipped right now.”

Mark Van Horn, a 40-year mechanic and owner of a trucking firm, told the TEXAN that what happened to the Trailblazer sounded like a broken fan belt that instead of just breaking free, got caught on something and friction from the rubbing started the fire.

“I tell my drivers, when your headlights go dim or you start losing voltage, stop and check it out,” Van Horn said. 

Memorization. 

We shudder at the thought. We might pray, we might read our Bible, we might even tithe, but memorize Scripture? Well, that might be asking a little too much of us. While some might argue that it is not the most neglected spiritual discipline, it cannot be denied that it is one of the least developed practices within the Christian community. But what do we miss out on when we do not exercise this spiritual muscle?

When I was a child, I went through a Bible drill program. I learned the order of the books of the Bible and well over 20 verses. Now, my kids are going through Awanas and they are learning the order of the canon, as well as numerous verses. They do this without complaining. In fact, they love it. They look forward to every Sunday night. When my wife and I pick them up from class, they usually begin sharing with us all the verses they are working on.

Somewhere between adolescence and adulthood we stop the emphasis of Scripture memorization. Apparently, this discipline was good enough for us as children, but not important enough for us as adults. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we do not understand the purpose and benefit of Scripture memorization.

What prevents us from growing in the discipline of Scripture memorization? It is not our inability to memorize, but our ability to make excuses. We can memorize television stations and the schedules of our favorite shows, but then fail to even attempt being a person who meditates on the law of the Lord for just a moment, let alone day and night (Psalm 1:2).

Still, we are quick to offer up reasons why we cannot grow in this discipline. We comment about our age or inability to recall. Sometimes we say we just don’t know what to memorize. What we will not say is the true reason we make no effort to grow in this spiritual discipline: we don’t esteem the Bible like we say we do. But if we were to spend as much time in our effort to treasure God’s Word in our hearts as we do justifying our ineptness, we would have already seen the growth that comes from meditating on God’s precious Word.

Casual Christianity has given way to a mediocre faith. We have tolerated a minimalistic approach to being disciples and making disciples, and the church is suffering for it. With an abundance of apologies, we miss out on a profusion of fruit. This is one of the reasons why I have led the church I pastor to pursue the discipline of Scripture memorization, so that we might enjoy the fruit that comes from dwelling on the Word of God.

Each month we focus on one verse or set of verses in hopes that our unified meditation would shape the culture of our church family and lead us to engage our community with hearts transformed by the Bible. This encouraged discipline now helps shape our worship services and stimulates a greater unity as we come together with one mind (Philippians 1:27). 

On the last Sunday of every month, we as a congregation, from the children to the senior adults, stand and recite together God’s Word. I cannot adequately describe the joy I felt the first time we did this together. I am more convinced now than ever of the need for churches to grow in the discipline of Scripture memorization. It is not about the quantity that is memorized, but the quality that comes from memorization. 

So let me encourage you to take up the discipline of treasuring God’s Word, as an individual, as a family and as a church family, and discover what it is like to be a fruit bearing tree planted by streams of water.