The Lost Horse

Our neighbor, Richard, lost a horse last night.

He finally found her at the bottom of a small ravine.

Somehow, she had stumbled in the dark iciness of the early winter evening and slipped over the edge. And there she lay, legs folded beneath her, unable to get up. This situation reminds me of the story Jesus told about the good shepherd who went looking for his lost sheep, then returned, rejoicing, carrying it on his shoulders.

But the ending of this story is different.

Another difference is that the horse doesn’t even belong to Richard. Pacer belongs to his wife, Diana, but that really doesn’t matter because Richard loves Diana.

And Diana loves this horse. Deeply. She’s had her since she was a newborn filly. Pacer is more than twenty years old now. But she has another problem.

The vet says that cancer spreading throughout her innards will take her before spring. So she’s been spending her days in her warm stall, only venturing out of the barn each evening for a slow ramble around the pasture.

It’s dark now —and cold. Below zero. Richard has found the horse, but he can’t rescue her. Richard and Diana’s ranch lies in a remote piece of country in southeast Montana, at the end of a road that is equally remote and completely innocent of gravel or scoria or any such improvement. These conditions preclude most kinds of travel in anything but dry, sunny weather. And the ravine in which the horse lay is inaccessible to his tractor, which he would need to help lift the nine-hundred-pound animal to her feet.

So Richard did the only thing his love could think to do.

He went back to the barn and got her heavy padded blanket.

Tucking it carefully around her, Richard then lay down beside her, hoping that his closeness and his own body heat would somehow lessen her coldness and comfort her through the night. She died the next morning. Yes, I thought that the ending of this story was different from the story of the Good Shepherd, but maybe it’s not.

Sometimes the sheep suffers. Maybe even dies.

But it is never alone. Always it is covered with the Shepherd’s warm blanket of love. And the even warmer sense of His lovely presence never leaves.

One day He will come, rejoicing, carrying His beloved sheep on His shoulders.

Jeannette Busby Johnson