Healing: A Horse Story
A Father’s Day Message
After my wife died in ‘92, I didn’t go to the beach again for about two years. (I’m only about 90 miles from the Pacific.) Finally God spoke to me and asked me to make three trips to the beach in two weeks, and each time I was to catch the wind - whatever that meant. For the first trip I was to rent a horse and race it on the beach.
Now I’m scared of horses. This thing weighed more than twice what I weigh and my friend with me (football player type guy) actually lifted me up and put me on the horse. He wasn’t going to ride one, however. They gave me about a 30 minute lesson and then let me go on my own.
Real soon I had the horse up to full speed, tearing down the beach and I was scared to death. When the horse was going up, I was going down. When the horse was going down, I was going up. Finally I had enough control to hold on with one hand and pull back on the reins. The horse came to a stop. This, I knew, wasn’t going to work.
This second time I started slowly, walking the horse and feeling the horse under me. I felt its wildness, its heart, the muscles, rhythm, and passion. I got in sync with this, then slowly built the horse up to a trot. I’m still in sync, still feeling the heart, the intimacy, wildness, rhythm and passion under me. Finally the horse opens to a full speed again, I’m in sync with it this time. Together we are racing down the beach, and I’m singing “Shine Jesus Shine” as loud as I can as we zoom past people staring at us. I loved it!
Now here is the message God spoke to me. God is wild. If you don’t believe it, read your bible stories. I listen to stories by people like Graham Cooke, Henry Gruver, and others and these are straight out wild. These people author books, but they tone the stories down some for the books - even publishers have a hard time accepting them. God is wild.
You were created in the image of God. That means within each of us that same wildness. Just like the horse is wild, it is a symbol for the Holy Spirit. On that first run I wasn’t in sync. Try that with the Holy Spirit and you end up with a sore spiritual butt. We have to feel the heart, the intimacy, the rhythm, and the wildness of God and rest in that.
Man is born to be wild - a stallion. To quote C.S. Lewis, too many people in the church have become as geldings. And geldings can’t bear fruit. Oregon (when I moved here) was led by stallions that moved on their convictions - McCall, Hatfield. We loved these men. Now we have a bunch of geldings that want to put casinos in the beautiful gorge, destroy God’s intent in marriage, and turn their backs on pension plans run by corrupt leaders. We are geldings in the sense we let them do it.
As you reflect on what Father’s Day means to you - are you, as a Man, willing to stand up and run as a stallion?
I came back from that beach trip with a tremendouse sense of healing. The boy had beoome a man.
(from Catching the Wind)