Article November 28, 1988 Issue

"The beauty of the Lord"

Prayer enables us to love being good.

Nancy Hormel Reinert

I Grew up on an Oregon ranch with a variety of livestock.

For me, the truth of the old saying "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" has its wry humor. I have seen a herd of cows, when driven to a beautiful new pasture, stand balking and mooing outside the open gate, eyeing the pasture with suspicion and refusing to go in.

As I think of it, the humor is mostly in retrospect, though. Trying to persuade cows or a horse or a goat that something is good or pleasant, when the animals are spooked with fear or just stubborn, can be more frustrating than funny. It certainly teaches the limitations of logic and argument or even force.

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