My friend Doug Glover gave me Run With the Horses
in 2002, inscribed with the words "Thanks for the help with my flock..." The book is about the man Jeremiah, a prophet, who is Peterson's personal example and inspiration from the bible. That year, Jeremiah joined Daniel and David for me. A few quotes from the first chapter say more than I can:"The puzzle is why so many people live so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly. There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture."
"No Oscars are given for integrity. At year's end no one compiles a list of the ten best-lived lives."
"Scripture...refuses to feed our lust for hero worship. It will not pander to our adolescent desire to join a fan club. The reason is, I think, clear enough. Fan clubs encourage secondhand living...We find diversion from our own humdrum existence by riding on the coattails of someone exotic...We do it because we are convinced that we are plain and ordinary."
"Scripture, however, doesn't play that game...We are prevented from following in another's footsteps and are called to an incomparable association with Christ."
Jeremiah grew weary, ready to settle for being just a face in the Jerusalem crowd, and told God his problem (Jeremiah 12). In reply, God asked him, "If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you fall down, how will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?" And then he handed Jeremiah another prophecy to deliver to his people...
They were hard questions, unwelcome questions, for Jeremiah. And for us. But they were, and are, God's questions. Fortunately for Jeremiah and us, such questions from God are accompanied by his help, not leaving us either to thrash in the hurricane of circumstances or huddle in the irrelevance of the turtle-shell. Jeremiah's verbal answer, if any, isn't recorded for us. But his life, his obedient following of God, shouts that he chose to run with the horses.
Doug and I ministered at Wyndham Park retirement home for eight years. Doug knew what weariness was, and he knew how to sow encouragement into my life through the example of a no-kidding man of God. Peterson's wealthy prose rewards slow, thoughtful reading. It isn't bathroom reading, or beach reading. It's more like shut-the-door-on-the-world-over-the-rainy-weekend reading.
Doug's body is two years in its grave now, but his spirit lives on with Jesus and Jeremiah. Their legacy lives on in me, and in numberless others. Perhaps, if you read this book, it can live in you as well.
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