A Bit of Ponder –

On riding a horse (but not really):

People have been riding horses for ages. Horse=transportation. I was told by some of my up-start students this morning that riding a roller coaster is twenty times safer than riding a horse. Tell it to the Marines (that’s ancient slang for – tell somebody who cares). The basic idea most people have is that you get on the horse, pick up the reins and drive. Uh-huh.

I mean, that’s more or less what you do with a car; it offers no opinions—turn the wheel, and, physics willing and the tires don’t rise, the car goes where you point it. Driving is not a collaborative effort.

On the other hand, when you “ride” a horse, you are calling on a fellow creature—much bigger, stronger and faster than you are, to go partners on your journey. Some people fight this—they want the horse to become a car, or a tractor—something without opinions and a tendency to offer input. If those people win in this effort, beating the personality out of the horse, they’ve lost a good deal of the value of the association: horses, outside of our human habitat, know a whole lot more about what’s what than people do. They smell things we don’t. They hear things we don’t. And their first priority is staying alive, which is too often not a human’s first consideration.

So you can ride in a couple of ways: you can choose a horse because you want to be him for a while – you want to own legs like his, a chest and lungs that large—if you could do it, you’d put your brain in his body, leaving him behind and using his body to do your work.

Or, you can respect him, ask him to help you, and—as his partner—benefit from his native sense and ability. But doing this requires some patience, study and wisdom. In the best partnership, you learn about the nature of your horse; you come his way and learn from him. In the end, he could save your life. Or, even if his behavior puts you at risk, if you are prepared for it by understanding, you may benefit from it in the end.

I think, many times, when we approach God in prayer, we’d really love to be able to stick a bit in his mouth. Then we could gather up the reins, prompt him with a heel, scoot him in the right direction, and pull his head around so that we can use his power to get where we want to go. We can’t smell water. We can’t see 360 degrees. We don’t realize that he knows more than we do about the country we’re crossing. We don’t want his input—we just want to drive.

I’m just thinking, that might not be the way to go . . .