You never know and can never predict when one single experience in your life will become a defining experience, coloring the rest of your days.
That’s what happened for me when I visited Pastor Mike McGovern in Missoula, Montana, and took a two mile ride on a dogsled. Pastor Mike drove us 90 miles out to the tiny town of Lincoln, hardly a wide spot on the highway, where we were hosted by the Freeland family in a home that looked more like a mountain chalet.
At dinner that night we talked about dog-sledding and the many fascinating and complex aspects of a sport that doesn’t get much press in Southern California. The entire Freeland family was involved in the activity—and not the least their 17-year-old daughter Stacy, the designated musher for my upcoming ride.
At that time, Stacy was getting ready for a grueling marathon called “Race to the Sky” --the state’s premier dogsled contest. Rick Freeland, her dad, an experienced dog breeder and musher in his own right, had for some time been preparing his daughter for every possible eventuality in that punishing and dangerous race. This young high school girl had trained for months to gain the knowledge, stamina, and endurance she would need for that competition.
She already had the fire and desire!
After a great meal together in the chalet, we all went out to get acquainted with the dogs and watch Stacy prepare for our short excursion. The ride was exhilarating, to say the least, but the biggest thrill and fascination for me was learning about and observing those incredible, highly-bred dogs in the very heart of their element.
The Freeland family had a full complement of superbly trained dogs—a rough-and-ready mix of Airedales, Huskies, Eskimos, and Siberians. As soon as Stacy pulled the sled out of its shed, the dogs went ballistic—barking, howling, and quivering all over, as if begging to be chosen for the privilege of running that day.
As she began selecting the dogs and putting them into their harnesses, she first fastened the sled onto an immovable post. It was a necessity, she explained, because once the first couple dogs got into harness, they would be so energized and excited that they would take off on their own. The family would have to chase the sled down—sometimes miles away—in a four-wheeler or snowmobile to recover the “runaways.”
The dogs, however, weren’t alone in their excitement. Stacy and I both had elevated heartbeats as we prepared for our mad dash across the Montana snowscape.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the dogs as Stacy selected each one. To say they were in a frenzy to be chosen would be putting it too mildly. As each dog understood that he would run that day he would leap, bark for sheer joy, and tremble with delight. The dogs that weren’t chosen showed such obvious signs of disappointment and depression that I almost laughed out loud.
One of the chosen dogs that day, however, manifested the same “hangdog” depression when Stacy harnessed him at the rear of the team.
“What’s up with him?” I asked her. “Why the ‘attitude’?”
“He’s a lead dog,” she explained, “and he knows it. But last time out he didn’t perform very well, so this is his discipline—to run behind the others.”
Every dog, it seems, has his dignity. And none of us enjoy being humbled.
The two-mile ride went by in a joyous blur, and it gave me enough of a taste of the sport to imagine what it must be like to race in the 350-mile Montana Race to the Sky—or maybe even the 1,000-mile Iditarod.
As I said, however, the real thrill of the experience wasn’t so much the ride with Stacy the Musher, but rather in hearing the stories about those magnificent animals that pulled our sled.
After Stacy told me that a dog team might run as far as 70 miles on the first day of a big race, completely exhausting themselves, I wondered why they would be so fanatically animated to run and embrace such torture. And by the way, those long races might also include some stretches of rough ground with no snow. The dogs have to keep pulling even when it hurts the tender pads on their feet.
“They run because they’re bred to run,” Stacy said with a smile. “That’s how they’re wired.”
Later, Rick explained that the dogs had been meticulously bred, and descended from world-class champions in the sport. To these dogs, life was running, and running was life.
I didn’t want to ask too many dumb questions, but the whole discussion had really fired myinterest and imagination. “What qualities are these breeders looking for in a champion sled dog?”
Rick didn’t hesitate with his answer. “The first thing is a passion to run. After that, we’re looking for exceptional speed, strength, endurance, focus, adaptability to extreme conditions, dedication to the musher, and an ability to function in unity with the team.”
Not even the most strongest, most carefully bred dogs, however, automatically make the cut. I was surprised to learn that in spite of great strength and an innate ability to run, some dogs will simply never pull. They might make a few fancy jumps and show some outward signs of being a sled dog, but they will never put themselves into it beyond a few yards. They might be beautiful dogs, but they are useless in the very activity they were bred to pursue.
In the days after my return to the routines and challenges of a pastor in Southern California, I began to ruminate on my Montana experience and what I had learned. How did some of these truths illustrate the Christian life? After all, Scripture is filled with illustrations from the animal world. We hear about cattle, sheep, lions, gazelles, vultures, sparrows, eagles, oxen, herons, peacocks, and even ants. Then there those mysterious animals like “behemoth” and “leviathan” that sound like dragons and sea monsters. So why not sled dogs?
Here are a few thoughts that came to me.
First, God saw us and knew us before we were born, and gifted us with the specific talents, gifts, inclinations, and capacities we need to fulfill His unique calling on our lives. Each one of us is a “workmanship” of God Himself, a masterpiece from the Creator’s own hand. Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:10: “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” In 2 Corinthians 9:8 (niv) the apostle writes, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
I believe that God “wires” or “breeds into us” the resources that will equip us to fulfill our God-ordained calling and accomplish what He sets before us to do. If, for instance, God created a person to be a gifted pianist, He might wire him or her with an exceptional sense of rhythm or perfect pitch. If God created a person to be a brain surgeon, however, that individual could be completely tone-deaf and get along just fine.
Second, our calling will at times exceed our capacities. Even though He brings each of us into this world for a specific purpose, experience teaches us that this individual calling goes beyond our natural gifts and abilities, so that we will need to depend on Him to accomplish the task.
The angel in Judges 6:11-12 may have called Gideon a “mighty warrior,” but Israel’s unlikely champion could never live up to the potential of that calling until he learned utter dependence on God. Centuries later, Paul would write: “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent….” (2 Corinthians 3:5, niv).
No one is competent to carry out the calling of God in his or her own strength. Without the Holy Spirit’s enabling and indwelling presence, we will be inadequate for our God-given roles. The Lord will always call us “over our heads” so that we will remember our complete dependence on Him.
Third, even though we have been born with basic talents and abilities, and can also count on divine assistance to even exceed those capacities, we should never allow these truths to become an excuse for laziness.
Talents need to be refined. Gifting needs to be trained, polished, and practiced. The New Testament urges us to be diligent, alert, determined and persistent as we serve the Lord. The writer to the Hebrews put it like this: “We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised” (Hebrews 6:11-12, niv). In our Lord’s parable, the man who hid his “talent” away instead of burning a little midnight oil and putting it to work earned his master’s severe rebuke. Preparation and practice go hand in hand with both our calling and our gifting.
I can’t help but think of the sled dog that Stacy had described to me. He had all the right breeding. He was a descendent of mighty and storied forbearers. He had great strength and looked every inch a champion. Beyond all that, he had a wide-open opportunity to become part of a magnificent team and fulfill his destiny. But he refused to pull. As a result, he may have been spared the rigors of a thousand mile endurance race, but he would never taste the glory of accomplishing the very thing he was put on earth to do.
Those are a few of the thoughts that stayed in my mind when I returned to California after my Montana adventure.
I want to use the gifts He has given me to bring Him glory and achieve His purpose for my life. As opportunities present themselves, I want to step up to challenges so far beyond my ability that I will be forced to lean heavily on strength and wisdom beyond my own. And I want to do my utmost to fulfill my calling, with all the strength, determination, and desire that He chooses to loan me during these few years this side of heaven.
It’s what I was born for.
And so were you.