Genesis 1:26...

A few weeks ago, S.W. was gone and someone needed to ride down to his cattle and check on them and so I volunteered. It was a either a Friday or a Saturday morning (we had a long weekend) and I caught his horse on a frost covered morning and rode down to count cows and make sure nothing was wrong (nothing that would be obvious to a city boy). I do not fancy myself a horseman and though my nickname here is “cowboy,” a name I got as a boy that stuck, I fear I do not live up to the nickname.

I struggled a little with his mare. She wasn’t used to me, I wasn’t used to her and the saddle he uses is the equivalent of a string bikini for a horse and doesn’t leave one feeling very secure. She was everywhere but where I wanted her to be, but I could control her to a point. I checked the cows and headed back to the house and a thought struck me.

The horse I was sitting on was significantly stronger than I and yet, with a simple bit and a God-given fear, I was able to ride and control this magnificent animal. Then I thought of the cattle. I thought of how I could walk right through them (minus one rather nasty bull) and they, though four or five times my size and much more than five times my strength, would step aside and even run away.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over…the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26

It was one of those little moments where God almost whispered, I told you so. I know there are animals that will take on a man without fear, but even them, a man can have dominion over; I cite the elephants in India, the Orcas at Sea World and a man that lives here in South Africa that has a lion farm where he walks freely among them and plays with them. These little moments where God shows me in a practical way the truth of His Word, are precious moments and to have such a moment on the back of a beautiful horse on a white, frosty morning as the earth began to wake from a night’s rest, was even more special.

I don’t know if this will mean anything to anyone but me, if so, that is okay. It was just one of those times when God knew I needed a little sign, unsolicited but freely given, to show me that He knew exactly where I was and what was going on in my intricate, yet finite mind.