Out Our Way: Put on your chaps - 2 Cor. 12:1-10

Out our way, trees are scarce on the plains, but some types of thorn trees seem to thrive in the arroyos on the Tiger Ridge. It seems that when we are hunting strays, some obnoxious critters like to hide in the thickets. Charlie urged me to get some good leather chaps for such times and they paid off, for working cattle is not always made up of riding easily across green pastures.

Neither is life.

I will be wearing Charlie’s hat this week in honor of his induction into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame, and will also be thinking about my worn and torn leather chaps hanging in my closet, for we rode amongst the thorns many a time chasing wayward units. But more than reminding me of the thorn bushes on the Tiger, they remind me how Charlie rose amongst the “thorns” that came from his “wreck” on Freckles that put him in the hospital, in a wheelchair, and was a factor that contributed to the complications which led to his death.

From what I observed, the “chaps” Charlie wore in the midst of those “thorns in the flesh” were his faith in God and the love of his family. Somehow, even in the wheelchair the day he gave me his old hat and outback coat, he was still the same Charlie who had faced down some troublesome bulls and galloped after break aways over tough country as we headed the herd to fresh pasture. He felt the thorns, but like the Apostle Paul, found God’s grace was sufficient. Indeed, in that wheelchair Charlie stood taller than he ever did on the Tiger Ridge. At least in my eyes. 

So the cowboy preached to the preacher, and, as before, urged me to “put on my chaps” to face the “thorns in the flesh” in my life. Re-reading the Book of Job this past month and Paul’s second letter to the Church in Corinth, I was reminded that even in the most luxurious green pastures, there are going to be arroyos hidden in the shadows filled with thickets of thorns. As Charlie reminded me of the old cowboy adage: “ If you are going to ride horses you are going to get thrown. It’s not a question of if but of when.” Same is true in life. Despite the “snake-oil” preachers who claim that real Christians never suffer, the truth is that if you are going to follow Christ you are going to run into thorns from time to time. Christ wore a crown of thorns — and no Apostle escaped the thorns in the flesh Paul wrote about either. Neither did the martyrs for the first 300 years as they were scorned, persecuted, tortured, and murdered for the faith, and in various places it is still going on today. The gulags in Russia were filled with Christians as are the ones in modern day China. Elsewhere we see open persecution, torture and murder of believers in Africa and the Middle East. Even in the USA, powerful enemies of the Church in Congress, the media, and courts have arisen and are applauded by an increasingly hostile culture. And how many good and decent folks suffer physically from disease, hard times, and personal disasters? No, the thorns are everywhere and always have been.

No one knows what thorns Paul was speaking of his Epistle. Imprisonment by the pagan Romans? Persecution by his fellow Jews? Many speculate it was his failing eyesight and deteriorating health. Perhaps it was all of the above, but whatever, Paul had plenty of thorns in the flesh. And God told him to endure them because through them God was doing something Paul could not yet understand. All he could do was trust.

That faith — or in my case, attempt at faith — were the “chaps” Charlie wore in his last years, and the ones he urged me to wear as well. You can’t ride the Ridge and escape the thorns. The snake-oil preachers may tell you “real Christians” can ride in shorts and sandals, but reality, as well as the scriptures and history, tell a different story. Like Charlie and Paul and so many others, I don’t like the thorns and can’t understand why I have to ride through them. But they are there and so I seek to wear the chaps of trust and faith, and pray God guide me out of the arroyo of thorn and back up to the open prairie of the good pastures He promises lie ahead.

Be blessed and be a blessing.

Brother John

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The Rev. John Bruington is the retired pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Havre. He now lives in Colorado, but continues to write “Out Our Way.” He can be reached for comment or dialogue at [email protected].