When Horses Teach Us About Hope: A Conversation with Kathryn O’Neill

Now, kind of in your horsemanship experience, what is kind of, how do you see God in that experience with when you're around horses?

I can see ...

That was one of the things I think that inspired me and made me want to write devotions because when I look at a horse, I, I see its beauty.

I see, um, a creature that God has created in a way that is just perfect for helping human beings and being friendly with human beings.

Built well to survive in the wild, but they are also, uh, friendly and trainable.

You know, everything from their eyes, which are high up on their heads and on the sides, so that even when they're grazing, because they're prey animals, they can still keep watch, um, for, you know, almost 360 degrees.

Uh, they have good night vision.

So all those things about the way they're made help point to God because He's obviously their creator.

But I think also, um, in riding, you learn to have patience because they're not always gonna do what we want them to do, and friends are like that too.

Um, [laughs] they, they have times when they ...

I mean, they can be lonely just like we can be.

Horses do, are herd animals, so they really like to have preferably other horses around, but they'll, they'll put up with a goat, maybe a cat.

Some of them have even been known to befriend chickens.

So we can learn lessons like that w- for us too, and so I think that was part of why, definitely part of why I wanted to write about them.

I love how God does that.

He communicates those truths that we need everywhere around us, through creation-

Yes

... through the animals we interact with.

It's not just people because we're a little hard-headed, and sometimes we need to get bucked off a horse a few times to remember-

[laughs]

... don't do this.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Well, Kathy, what do you hope kids walk away from your book with?

Well, this age is, you know, the, the middle grade to high school.