Sometimes God answers prayers and sometimes He doesn’t, and I have always wondered why. The simpleness of my human brain can’t comprehend why a God so powerful only answers certain prayers. And while I still don’t have an answer, observing a herd of horses recently, helped me to somewhat come to terms with the concept.
I don’t know much about the horses in the herd, they all come from a variety of backgrounds. Bucky is a beautiful golden buckskin, the boss of the herd. He has human trust issues but really needs his feet treated. If you treat his feet and he has a bad experience, he may not let them be treated again, but if you don’t treat them he could get in much worse shape. Each horse in the herd has their own needs but if you take one out of the herd for too long to help them or train them, the other horses will rearrange the hierarchy and the horse that left may not get accepted back in. If you work with one horse too much, the others get jealous. If one horse looks weak, it will get picked on and even hurt by the other horses as they show their dominance. But if you leave them all in separate paddocks, they get depressed from being lonely. If you let them eat fresh grass cuttings they can develop life threatening colic. But if you don’t cut the grass, snakes are more likely to lurk near them. Then there’s their dietary needs, supplements and medications that are unique to each horse. These 5 horses live in the same paddock and have such varying needs but their varying needs can easily influence and impact the other horses if too much or not enough human intervention is provided.
As I observed the work and wisdom involved in keeping horses, the way in which the herd interacted with each other and how their environment influences their safety and security - I realised that a lot of work goes into that ‘horse world’. A decision to help one horse in the herd impacts the other 4 to some degree. These horses are thought of, discussed, cared for and loved from far beyond the bounds of that paddock and they aren’t even aware of it and nor would they understand all the decisions that are made about them.
It got me thinking that it must be a lot of work to run a universe, to know when to intervene for the benefit of the people and when to hold back for reasons the people may never understand. But as a person, observing a tiny model of the universe in a horse paddock, I see that there is so much going on around me that I do not comprehend but I am thought of, cared for and loved while it happens.
And while I don’t like the pain, grief and hopelessness I have felt on this earth, I am tremendously grateful that I serve a God whose hand is over it all. A God who I believe will hold me close one day, wipe the tears from my eyes and whisper the words of Revelation 21 to me, “there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain here. All these things are gone forever.”
Pr Michaela Truscott
School Chaplain
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