Most of us are familiar with a bell tower. In order to ring the bell, a rope has to be pulled. For the bell to stop ringing, we must let go of the rope.

Corrie ten Boon, best known for hiding Jews during the Holocaust, was later captured and sentenced to hard labor in various concentration camps. She alone, from her family, survied to tell her story. Time and again she was confronted with her need to forgive those who had so brutually tortured her and her family.

Years later, after hearing a sermon on forgiveness, she often used the imagery of a bell in the tower to recount her own struggle with "letting go."

“'Up in that church tower,' [the pastor] said, nodding out the window, 'is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops.'

“I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.” — Corrie Ten Boom, Guideposts Classics, November 1972)

Todd Pierce is a professional cowboy, rodeo rider, and horse trainer. Over the years he has come to discover that his experience with taming wild horses is indeed a picture of God’s great love and care for us as He reaches down to tame our own wild hearts, making us fit for His service and setting us free to experience our true potential. 

The following is a partial transcript of one of his demonstration videos wherein he films himself gently wooing and taming a wild horse, explaining step by step how the process relates to our own relationship with God, and calling us to “leave behind our wildness and embrace the freedom that a loving God offers.”

The following are excerpts from the transcript of the video. For the fullest experience and understanding, please be sure to follow this link to view the entire video. The demonstration begins at marker 00:01:01.

The scene opens with Todd alone in a small training ring, making his first approach to a wild horse, a filly, who’d been brought in the previous evening, and he makes the observation that “because she hadn't had any handling, she thought that she was actually doing really well, because she just lived in a pasture, got deep grass, and that was her life.” 

He continues:

Unfortunately, that's where I believe a lot of people live, is they've settled for this ability to stay alive and survive, but they don't actually know what they're capable of and the potential that's hidden inside of them.  And you can't forgive yourself. You can't bring out the greatness inside of you. That's something that is reserved for Jesus alone.  So we'll let her move around because I want her to know that she's actually free.  I can't control her.

And now that she's looking at me, she's probably asking the question of why it is that she's here and what do I want from her? A wild horse, even the wild horses that we have in our country, they don't live near as long or near the quality of lives of horses that are actually cared for.

If you’re gonna go round up a wild horse, it will take a tame horse to do it, because one tame horse can overcome fifty wild horses simply because it’s partnered with man. 

It probably never even crossed her mind that I would want something from her. If she knew what my dream was for her, there wouldn’t be any hesitation in this at all. And what she’s gonna get to encounter today is not just a look from me, not just a knowledge of me, but such a connection that everything that’s inside of her, as far as all of her gifts, all of her potential is gonna get released. She’s super nervous about this, and she’s got a reason to be. All of her instincts say that, “I wanna stay in control of my own world.” 

She’s paying just enough attention to me so that she can be comfortable. But if we’re gonna get anywhere today, she’s gonna have to understand that we’re gonna have to become one. And that oneness is gonna take a lot of courage on her side, and a lot of kindness and patience on my side. ...

The rope isn’t here to control her. It’ like the Holy Spirit that draws us to Him. … If we use fear and intimidation so that we can dominate her and manipulate her to make her do what we want, then we’ve got a broken animal. We don’t want a broken animal. We want a healed animal. And her nature would actually work against that healing if all she listens to was her instincts.  ….

She’s got her boundaries. She comfortable with me around her, petting her … [but she's thinking], "This is unsafe. Someone’s gonna hurt me. Someone’s gonna take something from me. How do I stay in control?"

She wants to know me. She just doesn’t know what it will look like to give up all of herself so that she can have all of me.

I don’t wanna get too far away from her here for a second, because I don’t want her to think that every time she gets scared that the only way she can feel safe is to get away from me, because, eventually, when she gets scared she actually gonna start lookin’ for me.

If she felt like I was gonna put her in a corner or force her to do something, this would have had an entirely different outcome. Just because you’re in authority, doesn’t mean that you have to dominate [people].

It’s nothing short of a miracle. This is what love does. It creates safety. It creates power. It creates a whole new world of opportunity. ...

As he slips on the saddle for the first time, he makes this powerful observation:

She don’t know yet that this is a gift, but she’ll learn. … It’s not because she was forced; it’s because she was loved.

In 1900, Eugene V. Debs unsuccessfully ran as a candidate for the presidency of the United States as a member of the Social Democratic Party, and later as a member of the Socialist Party of America. He was an outspoken critic of US involvement in World War I. 

On June 16,1918 Debs delivered an anti-war speech which would ultimately land him in prison for violation of  the Espionage Act of 1917, with the courts citing his intention to obstruct the draft and recruitment for the war effort. Debs appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, but failed and began serving his 10 year sentence on April 13, 1919. While many others prosecuted under the controversial act were subsequently pardoned, Debs was released in 1921 when President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence to time served.

Though his politics were no doubt in opposition to those of a democratic, capitalistic society, his identification with the needs and plight of the masses are both interesting and even perhaps convicting. At his sentencing hearing he famously expressed himself saying, “Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”