I have a thing with horses.

Like every little girl who begs for pony rides and horse calendars at Christmas, and adult who revels in the memory of learning how to ride tenuously with a bareback pad as a teen, I had a love affair with horses.  Forgotten as a young adult, but then reborn when my oldest daughter showed an affinity and an aptitude for riding as a four-year-old. We don’t own one (I’ve never owned one) but she’s been riding weekly for three years.

Tuesday afternoons we come home with dirty shoes from the arena and shirts covered in hair from brushing the backs and necks of horses at the stable.

So right now, we all have a thing for horses.

Since she was little, Hope’s been able to take control of a giant animal more than twenty times her own weight with a little piece of steel and some leather.  The horses she rides are well behaved and used to the feel of children on their backs, but they are still horses with habits and wills of their own, now bent to the will of a seven-year-old.

She began on a pony, though. Danny Girl was Hope’s first regular lesson pony, an old lady by equine standards. She was perfectly behaved, walked nose to tail with the pony in front of her, never was spooked, and almost never let a child fall from her back.

When Hope’s instructor donated Danny Girl to a ranch where she could retire from daily lessons, my daughter moved up to riding a much larger horse. Justin, a 15 1/2 hand paint, was equally sweet and well behaved, but always tested his riders. Could a five-year-old show him who’s boss?  If not, out of the arena he’d ride with a worried child on his back.

Take charge, be firm and even, be disciplined and consistent, Hope’s instructor would teach the kids.  Tell him what you want him to do with your hands, your legs and your words.  He’ll obey.

She’s never been scared of a horse. Even when she’s fallen (which she’s done 3 or 4 times).

C.S. Lewis compares our earthly bodies and responsibilities with horses (from Miracles):

Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot even control an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we have now were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some-day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, these greater mounts, those winged, shining, and world-shaking horses, which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King’s stables.  Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else — since He has retained His own charger — should we accompany Him?

His point is that we can’t run from the desires that plague our bodies here on earth. We must learn to manage them in spite of ourselves, and bring them all under self-control and control of the Holy Spirit.

Don’t be afraid.  Instead, take charge, be firm and even, be disciplined and consistent. Learn self-control in all things. Get up in the saddle so that eventually you may ride bareback with ease.

And then, someday we will ride with Him on real horses, not on ponies or on imitations of the true animals.

**[Paul tells the church at Corinth to "run from sexual immorality" and I wholeheartedly agree.  But with most other things, there needs to be a management and balance of desire.  We cannot run from our earthly bodies until we are dead and in heaven with Christ. Have you ever wondered why He gave us bodies at all?]

C.S. Lewis quote from A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works.

What do you think?  Ponies or Horses?  Do you agree with Lewis?

Tags: bareback, CS Lewis, heaven and earth, horses, riding