A Lesson From War Horse: Do You Watch People Fail Or Help People Up?
Last Saturday evening (New Year's Eve), Holli & I went to see "War Horse." It's a good movie... We don't go to the movie's often but when we do, I normally come away with a sermon illustration or too. I am going to share those with you over the next couple of days in my blog.
This is the first one...
The plot of the movie is about a young man and his father who go to a horse sale and his father gets carried away... He sees a horse that is a beautiful animal and he gets into a bidding war... with his landlord no less... and pays an exorbitant amount of money for a horse that can't plow... which is what he needs. His landlord comes around to collect the rent and he can't pay cause he's spent it on the horse. He promises to plant a field in turnips and sell them to pay the rest of the rent. The only problem is... Joey has never pulled a plow. So, the horse has to be taught to plow... it's not a pretty sight.
The young man puts a yoke on Joey (the horse) and hitches him to a plow. He tries and tries but the ground is hard and Joey isn't accustomed to pulling a plow.
So, you have a young man trying to teach a horse to plow.. a father watching all this and sensing he is going to lose his farm because he can't plant the field in turnips to pay the rest of the rent... and the neighbors who hear that the lad is trying to train the horse to plow.
So all of a sudden lots and lots of people begin showing up... to watch a horse to learn to plow. At first, when you see the people coming, I thought they were going to help break the field but no; they stand beside the fence and watch the boy fail and fail and fail and fail. I felt very sorry for the kid as he is trying his best to get the horse to plow and people are standing by watching him fail.
As I watched that scene I thought that it was a picture of life and.. unfortunately, too often, the church. We are good at watching people fail but not so good at helping people up. We might even stand beside the fence and read some scripture verses admonishing someone to "press on" but we aren't so good at getting INTO the field and helping.
We need to get better at helping. Anyone can stand beside a fence and watch someone fail; it takes a special person to get over the fence and help the person. I encourage you to begin helping people more. The scripture challenges us to "Bear one another's burdens" (Gal. 6:2). Bear someone's burdens today.
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