In every elementary school class, it seems there’s at least one girl who is a horse fanatic.
In my class, it was Sue. She didn’t actually own a horse, but Sue’s bedroom was jam-packed with horse stuff. Plastic horses, stuffed horses, horse posters. I didn’t really get it. I was into the Beatles, the Monkees, and sports. I thought Sue was an aberration until I eventually crossed paths with other folks who are crazy about horses. There seem to be a lot of them.
In fact, I currently have a good friend who falls squarely into that category. My friend Heidi never had a chance to own a horse until, in her 30s, she stumbled upon an opportunity to adopt two wild horses.
Cody and Skylar were mustangs who had grown up with virtually no human contact. Heidi knew they were going to require some serious training to become more than pretty pasture ornaments.
“I was excited about having a relationship with Cody and Skylar and had visions of scratching their ears, taking care of their physical needs, riding them on trails, and having adventures together,” Heidi said. “But everything I did to try to get close to them just scared them because they thought I was going to eat them.
“They couldn’t understand that my human body language wasn’t meant to be threatening and that I just wanted to be their friend. The good plans I had for them were beyond anything they could imagine.”
I occasionally watched Heidi work with Cody and Skylar and was amazed to learn there is a secret horse language one needs to know in order to communicate with these beautiful creatures. I thought all horses were like Roy Rogers’ Trigger—you know, just whistle and they’ll come running to let you hop on.
It took many months and the help of a more experienced horse trainer, but Heidi grew more fluent in “horse-speak” and was eventually able to ride Cody. (Skylar the scamp never did get with that program.)
“Over time, they came to trust and even like me,” Heidi said. “I was finally able to do the fun things I had envisioned. But Cody and Skylar could never have made that happen. I had to be the one to get down on their level and show them I could be trusted.”
Ah, there it is—the grand allegory that so perfectly describes what Christmas is all about.
“When I think about that time with my horses,” Heidi continued, “it makes me think about how much God wants us to know who He is and to believe He can be trusted. He wants a relationship with us so much that He was willing to become one of us. He was willing to limit Himself in order to look like us and speak like us and tell us about Himself in a way we could understand.
“Just like I had a good plan for my horses—to love them, take care of them and give them a purpose for their lives—God has a plan for us that is good, although probably beyond our comprehension. He has good intentions toward us and wants us to trust Him.”
A chance to come in from the cold, barren wilderness of our destructive independence to the warmth of God’s loving embrace. We could never have made that happen. God had to come to us.
And He did, in the person of Jesus Christ.
Let every heart prepare Him room.
“Since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity…” (Hebrews 2:14)
“…in these last days (God) has spoken to us in His Son…And He (Jesus) is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature…” (Hebrews 1:2a & 3a)