Fixing Our Eyes

Hanging around other barns, going to horseshows, and training demonstrations (clinics) offer some excellent opportunities for horse and people watching. Great learning opportunities too!

Just like people, some horses are braver than others. Some horses are calmer than others. Some horses are just so hyper and hung up on their lack of self-confidence that they act out in unsafe and unruly ways.

At one of these training events, a small, white horse was the unruly, unsafe one. He shied away from obstacles, attempted to dislodge his rider, dashed off in all sorts of directions, including up AND sideways at the same time. The young girl riding him stayed aboard and tried to maintain control of the situation. To the observer she wasn’t having much success, not until….

Trying to get her horse over a narrow bridge, similar to the one in the photo, he refused. He balked. He turned away. He threatened to buck her off. He resisted with every fiber of his being. He resisted with his head –tossing it into the air to avoid her hands. He resisted with his back by not listening to her legs encouraging him forward. He resisted with his feet by turning other directions. He even resisted with his tail, thrashing it like an angry cat. He was NOT going to walk across the bridge that terrified him.

But the clinician, or maybe another spectator, family member of the rider, somebody who knows the horse, I don’t know who spoke, but somebody told the girl to put her horse right behind the more confident horse who had already navigated the bridge several times, from both directions. To put her horse so close to the other horse that he wouldn’t be able to see the bridge. He wouldn’t be able to see anything other than the horse right in front of his eyes.

It worked!

Both horses crossed the bridge. The leader, and the follower. With his eyes firmly fixed upon the horse in front, the white horse crossed the bridge as if he had no worries, nothing to fear. Putting his trust in the horse in front of him, he followed obediently over the bridge. The obstacle itself no longer held power over his actions.

“fixing our eyes on Jesus, … you will not grow weary and lose heart,” Hebrews 12:2-3 (NIV).