Why don’t we have Doggish Horses?

Anyone who knows me will know that I seldom miss an oppertunity to ride a horse. I have had quite a number of dates with horses. The last one of them really went bad when the horse, when it was galloping down a hilly slope at about 50 miles an hour,  suddenly decided that it had had enough of me and unloaded me to crash down my right shoulders leaving me with a scary, and in a strange way, a cherished, remembrance of that affair.

Some of my friends at the Camp Allen retreat took to horse riding. For one of them, it was her first ride on a horse. She told me that she constantly was speaking to the horse and patting him. I understand why she had to talk to the horse, because I have done it myself. I talk to the horse and keep patting them when I ride them precisely because a horse is not a dog. This may seem confusing. But let me explain, unlike the dog, the horse seldom comes off as a lovable being. It takes more effort to befriend a horse than a dog.

Whenever I get on a horse, I am often apprehensive that the horse wouldn’t be friendly to me and would want to do something bad to me - like bite off my hand or throw me off when going down a hill. So I, in speaking to the horse and patting him, try to placate him and make him feel loved so that he would be predisposed to be friendly towards me. But with the dog, I don’t have to do all of this, the dog is such a lovable and friendly creature. The moment I get close to him, his eyes brighten, he walks towards me, smells me, touches me with is wet nose, licks me, wags his tail. With the horse, I get a disinterested glance, then a indifferent snort and a dismissive wag of the tail.

Oh, my dates with horses would be a lot better if only the horses had the spirit of the dogs. If only there was a doggish horse, I would devote all of my life to maintaining a stable of horses and be happy and content with my life. But no there is no doggish horse anywhere in the world… Sad.

This got me wondering... I wondered why God did not have this brilliant idea of making a doggish horse? Why didn’t he give the horse the heart of a dog? This got me thinking…

In life, one's expectations are full of such ‘wish creations’. I have a friend who is a movie lover. I have another friend who is a book lover. I dream of having a friend who is a bookish movie lover. But no that friend isn’t to be. Why does God not give me such friends? After all, if I had such a friend, I wouldn't need any other friends… oops! Perhaps, God knows this, that is why He did not give me a bookish movie lover for a friend, because I would be 'dangerously' too content with him and wouldn't seek other friendships.

A man has a mother, he has a wife, but then he wishes he had a motherly wife – a wife who embodies the unconditional affirmation of a mother along with the passionate love she has as a wife. No, God hasn’t created that genre. Perhaps, this is because if a husband has such a person, he may be too 'dangerously' content in this worldly soul-mate and may not want to pursue and seek solace in his heavenly Soul-mate (God Himself). Likewise, a wife may dream of a fatherly husband but would never get such a man, because if she got hold of such a man, she may be too busy pleasing her earthly fatherly husband not have any energy to expend herself in pleasing her heavenly Father and eternal Husband.

God hasn’t created doggish horses for a good reason. But He has created dogs and horses so that we would be discontented with ‘just dogs’ and ‘just horses’ and would seek to find the non-existent doggish-horses and in the process of ‘seeking’ would ‘find’ our contentment in Him who is the embodiment of all that is real, perfect and beautiful in life. God wants to use life experience to keep from getting 'dangerously' contented with the million trivialities of life, so that we would be impelled to find our contentment in Him who is the Father and Husband and Friend and Master and Prophet and King and Priest and inexplicably, the Sinner to walked up the gallows on my stead.

The purpose of all of life from dogs to horses to books to movies is to glorify God - to glorify God by using all of this 'means of discontentment' and thereby to draw us to Himself. After all, one day we would indeed have doggish horses, that would be the day when the children play with snakes and lambs would lay beside lions, when we live in the new Heavens where God is at the centre and would be supremely glorified.