Out Our Way: My saddle pards: Charlie and Job - Job 19:25-27

Out our way, you learn humility the hard way. It is not about pride or ego — but survival. Charlie taught me that every cowboy gets tossed from time to time — and often it is more than pride that is hurt. Indeed, despite Charlie’s skills and experience cowboying, when Freckles was spooked by a dog in the brush while moving cows, Charlie ended up in the hospital and a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He died only a few years later.

Even so, he never quit — and while it must have killed him to sell his horses and the horse trailer he built himself, not to mention accepting that his days cowboying were gone forever — he never quit looking ahead. Charlie was a cowboy, and his induction into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame next month demonstrates he was not, like some would say of me, “all hat and no cattle.” But more than that, Charlie was — no, is — a man of God.

For the past few days I have been reading the Book of Job — a man of faith who was sorely tested as one trial after another came upon him. The devil attacked him and beat him down, and God seemed to be silent. His friends came to accuse him of deserving his fate for unrecognized and thus unconfessed sins. His friends did not accept he could suffer so much without it being some sort of divine punishment. But Job was innocent. The text is clear on that point. Job’s trials and tribulations came from Satan — not God — and were allowed to test Job’s faith.

Like Charlie, Job discovered life is unfair. And unlike some “Prosperity Gospel” false prophets — and Job’s friends — who proclaim only good things happen to Godly people, far too many of us experience quite a different reality. Bad things do happen to good people. 

Why that is so is above my pay grade, for after all, “There is a God and I am not Him.” That is reality and there is nothing you or I can do about it. But what I do with the reality is a different matter. If you are going to ride horses, you are going to get thrown and likely hurt from time to time. If you are alive and living in the world, you are also going to be tossed, stomped and hurt from time to time. So what are you going to do about it? Job’s wife said, “Curse God and die!” [Job 2:9] Job’s friends said, “Accept you deserve it, that it is your own fault, and blame yourself.” But both Charlie and Job say, “Cowboy up!”

That dog rushing out of the tall grass and spooking Charlie’s horse was not Charlie’s fault, but Charlie was in the wheelchair instead of the saddle anyway. The devil’s attacks on Job family, life, and eventually his health were not Job’s fault either, but he ended up in ashes and sorrow. 

Yet this is the marvel I find in Job thus far, that despite all the trials heaped upon him and all his supposed friends declaring they were somehow his own fault and just punishment by God, Job didn’t quit. He did not understand it — for the cause of his trials was “above his pay grade,” too — he cried out against it as unfair and unjust, but he didn’t quit.

Neither did Charlie. The church was overflowing at his funeral as testimony after testimony was given to his faithfulness toward God and towards neighbor. And all of us who knew the man knew it was true. Had I been the preacher I might have used this text from Job, who in the midst of his deepest anguished yet cried out “I know that my redeemer liveth ... and I shall yet see my God.”

I rode with Charlie on the Tiger Ridge for six years, but also in the hospital rehab unit for that year before his death. I read Job and his refusal to quit and I think of Charlie. He didn’t just teach me to cowboy — but to “cowboy up” and walk by faith.

Be blessed and be a blessing!

Brother John Bruington