Since I live on a 1,300-acre ranch with over fifty head of horses, I am sometimes asked how much a horse costs. My answer is almost always, “It depends on how long you want to keep your horse alive!” You could easily buy a horse’s freedom from the meat market for the cash in your junk drawer, but that don’t make you a cowboy. You have not yet begun to pay…
Horses are in the habit of eating. All day. Every day. Beginning early in the morning before most cat-owners have even thought of rising. This means that one skinny horse could chew your front yard completely clean before the sun is warm on your kitchen window. It means you will need to buy a few acres of Timothy-grass before tonight if you want Thunder to have something green to eat tomorrow.
This is just horse-owning at a trot. Just wait until your nag gets warmed up! Do you want him to stay healthy? Pay a vet. Do you want him in shoes? Pay a farrier. Do you want to do something else on the side in addition to owning your horse? Pay a stable hand. Don’t have a stable? Well, you get the idea!
Now, there is more to life than maintaining the status quo. Vince Lombardi said, “The joy is in the creating and not the maintaining.” That is so true! But creating means nothing if your creation is not sustained and grown to its intended purpose. The cost of creating is maintaining.
My granddad, Evangelist Bill Rice, used to say, “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” He was a pioneer who realized that God uses people who start something and don’t quit.
To be sure, continuing what is truly important will require you to quit whatever is not important on a regular basis! And each of us needs the wisdom of God to realize that each of God’s purposes has an appropriate time, place, and person. None of us should mindlessly sink into a rut on a downward trail that empties into Dead End Canyon.
But once you begin what God created you to do, see it through.
Look ahead. Ask yourself where your creation will lead, when its purpose will be accomplished, and who will grow (and maintain) it when you are gone. Most of us never even consider what life will be like without us, but you had better do so if your creation deserves to live after you are gone.
Work ahead. Strangely enough, creating demands maintaining, but maintaining requires us to continually create and re-create, as well! The only way for any of us to remain true to our core purpose is to continually make adjustments in order to stay on track. This means that I must work not only to maintain what others have begun, but to grow what they began for God’s glory and for the people who will follow me.
Maintenance is the cost of creation. A thing worth beginning is a thing worth seeing through to the end. What should you begin today, and what is it that you steward that deserves your maintenance?