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How a Runaway Horse Led Me Home
During a painful spiritual struggle, I reluctantly made my way to a
conference I had been invited to attend as a guest speaker.
Frankly, I didn’t want to participate, because I felt unworthy to speak to the group of Christian professionals.
But something compelled me to go anyway, and I’m glad I did. I met a professional horse jockeyturned-pastor
named Pavel, and he told me three stories in rapid succession.
The Runaway Horse
Shortly after becoming a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, Pavel was working at his stables in
Kiev when one of the animals escaped and fled down a busy street.
Pavel was horrified. He didn’t know how to stop the horse. He saw the creature darting through
traffic. He heard squealing tires and the neighing animal. An injured horse would hurt his
team. A dead horse would prove costly to his wallet and career. Helpless, he prayed, “God,
make the horse stop.” At that precise second, the horse halted in midgallop.
Pavel approached the animal cautiously. It didn’t twitch a muscle. Gently Pavel began to
nudge the horse back in the direction of the stables. Step by step it followed him obediently, its
movements resembling a robot. It was as if angels had grabbed the horse’s legs and were planting
one in front of the other.
“It was a miracle,” Pavel told me. “The incident occurred when the horse was full of energy. It
should have been impossible to stop the horse.”
Dateline Moscow
Give Me Vision
Several years later, after Pavel had given up horses to keep the Sabbath, he met an elderly woman at
one of the three churches which he served as pastor. The woman was losing her sight. She went through
three pairs of glasses, each thicker than the last. It got to the point that she couldn’t read at all.
Weeping, she prayed over her open Bible one evening, “God, I want to see. All I want is to be
able to read Your Word.” Through her tears something incredible happened. The words of the
Bible came into focus. The woman began to read.
At church the next Sabbath, she read from her Bible before the entire church. A shocked member
exclaimed, “You’re reading without glasses!”
“That’s right,” the woman replied with a smile. “I can see like a first grader!”
Andrew
McChesney
A Freed Prisoner
A young man contacted Pavel to ask for food and a job after being released from prison, where he had
served time for theft. But the man had a problem. While in prison, he had been beaten brutally by the guards,
who had broken his spinal cord in three places. He could not walk.
Pavel brought the young man to church. Seeing the visitor with his thin legs dangling limply over the pew,
church members felt compassion and decided to pray for him. They held a season of special prayer for a
whole week. They prayed morning and evening.
One morning the man, excited, called Pavel on the phone. “I’m walking!” he exclaimed.
My Story
When Pavel reached the end of the third story, my mouth hung open, and all I could say was “Wow!”
Jesus said to a woman caught in her own painful spiritual struggle: “Neither do I condemn you . . . go now
and leave your life of sin.” Why? Because “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk
in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:11, 12).
I left the conference knowing three things: The God who set an ex-convict free from his prison of immobility
could break my ugly chains of sin. The God who gave a woman her sight could allow me to see His will.
And the God who stopped a runaway horse would lead me home. n
Andrew Mc Chesney is a journalist in Russia.
www.AdventistReview.org | October 24, 2013 | (983) 23