Run with the Horses – The Quest for Life at Its Best

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With a population of about 1,500 head, chances are strong that you will be able to admire these wild horses during your visit. As descendants of the horses who were reintroduced to the area in the 1800s by cattle ranchers, you are witnessing the living story of the West. Jeremiah was doing what a lot of us do. He was letting people get to him. He was letting people live rent-free in his head. He was letting the normal, everyday challenges drag him down. God was saying, “There are bigger and stronger forces to contend with, and you better get ready.” Last week there was a video on facebook of hundreds of wild horses that were running in the snow. It was a majestic picture of strength and freedom. The horse is a symbol of meekness or power under control. The phrase “running with the horses” came about to symbolize a person who is strong and fast and at the top of their game in whatever they do. Jeremiah shows us what that means. ‭‭ Jeremiah‬ ‭12:5 The course takes runners along what is known as the Wild Horse Loop, where wild mustang horses can often be spotted along the maintained dirt roads that are used for the course, which takes runners participating in the half-marathon from the starting point on Route 53 (just outside Point Butte) along the mountain ridge, passing White Mountain and The Towers mountain on the way southward to the finish in the town of Green River.

Zedekiah shows that good intentions are worthless if they are not coupled with character development. We don’t become whole persons by merely wanting to become whole, by consulting the right prophets, by reading the right book. Intentions most mature into commitments if we are to become persons with definition, with character, with substance…goodness does not just happen…It requires careful nurture, disciplined training, long development” (164). It is not enough to be in the right place; it is not enough to say the right words; it is never enough until we are walking with God twenty-four hours a day everywhere we go, with everything we say an expression of love and faith” (68). All photos courtesy Run With the Horses Marathon/Green River Chamber of Commerce Race Weather & Climate

A writer once said that working on ourselves and reading inspirational self-help books is a lot like constructing a Model T Ford in our living room. We read the instructions, put together the pieces, and after a while we've got ourselves a real showcase of an automobile. Prayer is never complete and unrelieved solitude; it is, though, carefully protected and skillfully supported intimacy. Prayer is the desire to listen to God firsthand, to speak to God firsthand, and then setting aside the time and making the arrangements to do it” (99). Alison Lester gives a historical fiction account of the rescue of the dancing Lipizzaner stallions during World War II. Nina and her father live in Europe and, as the fighting from the war creeps closer to their town, they are faced with the challenge of saving the last of the Lipizzaner horses. Along with a groomsman and Zelda, an old cab horse, they cross the mountains into safety. The story is tense and the small group of people and horses face many dangers.

The author then proceeds to outline a life of faith in the example of Jeremiah the prophet. Faith is presented as tangible when Peterson quotes that "hope is not a dream but a way of making dreams become reality". He says that "God is out to win the world in love and each person has been selected...to be set apart to do it with him." Like that wonderful story you may remember in his Book about the old Patriarch Jacob, all his joints crying out in pain, heading off on one last pilgrimage with his Biblical peers - the Journey up to the top of Mount Zion, to the final Place of Peace! The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable but to live as deeply and thoroughly as possible—to deal with the reality of life, discover truth, create beauty, act out love…The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day” (152-3). What you will see through reading Run With The Horses, is how Eugene took biographical parts of the book of Jeremiah and reflected on them personally and pastorally in the context of present, everyday life. What he finds is the only way that any of us can live our best is in a life of radical faith in God. “It is not enough to be in the right place; it is not enough to say the right words, it is never enough until we are walking with God twenty-four hours a day everywhere we go, with everything we say as an expression of love and faith.” He says, “We need to be stretched out of dull moral habits, shaken out of pretty and trivial busy work. Where we are and will be is compounded with who God is and what He does…Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah…Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops.”I didn't want this book to end. Such profound wisdom and a compelling vision of a life of faith. By looking at the life and work of Jeremiah, Peterson reminds us that crowds, celebrity, and success are poor indicators of a life well lived. As he says, "There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture. We have celebrities but not saints. Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs". We're reminded that to be truly human, to be truly alive, is to start with and center ourselves in God, who "knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives." That’s Eugene Peterson’s very own street-talk version of Jeremiah 12:5. You can read the whole thing in Eugene Peterson’s multi-million-copy-selling translation of the books of the Bible - The Message... Apart from the before, the now has little meaning. The now is only a thin slice of who I am; isolated from the rich deposits of before, it cannot be understood. location 300

You are the eighteenth class to graduate at Ambassador Bible College. From this day forward, we will see you really as a picture on our hallway out here. Now, we're going to pass your picture a dozen times a day. Occasionally, we'll pause and we'll look at your class picture. Wse'll look and we'll remember. What might we remember about the class of 2017?It is enormously difficult to portray goodness in an attractive way; it is much easier to make a scoundrel interesting” (14).

So... Imagine this! WHAT IF... we SEE THROUGH THE GAME? What if our Bells and Whistles are suddenly all gone? What happens then? stars. By trotting through the book of Jeremiah, Peterson extracted various lessons to encourage the reader to live a similar life of focused fervency.

And so when Jacob and his friends arrive at Mount Zion’s peak... oh, the joyful celebration - pipes and timbrels everywhere, the dancers, the Freedom! As long as matters are really hopeful," wrote Chesterton, "hope is mere flattery or platitude. It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable."5 Read more at location 1559 Any part of our lives that is turned over to the crowd makes it and us worse. The larger the crowd, the smaller our lives…If we can’t do it well, we make it larger. We add dollars to our income, rooms to our houses, activities to our schedules, appointments to our calendars. And the quality of life diminishes with each addition. A disciple is always a student: learning, studying, and growing in the faith. Don't count this time at Ambassador Bible College as the sum of knowledge; it's only the beginning. As you graduate, let me leave you with a blessing on behalf of the faculty and the staff at Ambassador Bible College. It's a paraphrase of the apostle Paul's blessing to the elders at Ephesus, out of Acts 20:32.