...Next, I was assigned a column for Easter Sunday:

"...Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, "Why are you doing this?" tell him, "The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly."'"
--Mark 11:1b-3

The biblical story of the Easter season is plumb full of miracles: the withered fig tree, healing a severed ear, the rooster that crowed on cue, darkness in the middle of the day, the ripping of the temple curtain and, of course, the resurrection, to name a few.

To horse people, however, one of the top miracles was Jesus riding an untrained colt into Jerusalem without getting badly injured or killed.

Think about it: Here’s a colt, possibly a stallion, being sacked out (they "threw their cloaks over it"), mounted by a full-sized man and ridden through a crowd that was doing its level best to spook the critter by yelling, throwing stuff in front of him and waving branches all around him. That’s enough to send an experienced, well-mannered horse into a frenzy, let alone one that has never been ridden!

But that animal had the world’s greatest horseman a-top him. After all, "...by Him [Jesus] were all things made...." - including the four-footed ones. And if Jesus could calm a storm-tossed sea, quieting a nervous colt was no problem a-tall.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that horses - like people - tend to behave toward you like you behave toward them. If you act frightened, you’ll end up with a spooky horse. If you aren’t alert, your animal won’t pay close attention to you. On the other hand, if you act calm and controlled, you’ll get a calm, controlled horse. Well, that colt was being ridden by someone who literally had the whole universe under control, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if Jesus’ mount had a downright supernatural calmness.

At Easter time, we tend to talk about the obvious message: how Jesus’ death and resurrection can give pardon to us poor sinners - and He throws never-ending life in to boot. That’s all very important. But we tend to slide right past another important idea: When our life is full of fear, uncertainty, unknown situations and such, we need to let Jesus saddle up and take the reins of our life.

I guess that sometimes we just don’t have very much horse sense.

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