As I type, I sit in front of the wood-burning stove pleasantly flickering in the Great Room. (My eyes burn because I haven’t yet got the hang of making a smokeless fire.) As I think over the past year, here is my question. Which predominates in your experience – pull-factors or push-factors?
Another way of saying it might be: is your life marked more by pursuit of what you love and think best, or is it more frequently a matter of reacting to things that happen along and prod you in the direction that you are to take?
Or, a third way of expressing it might be: is your walking with Jesus a matter of His wooing you through what you find attractive, or does He more often compel you in the wise path by calling for a response to your circumstances?
Pull-factors may seem more desirable, so you may disagree with me, but I’m not convinced that one is necessarily better than the other. I believe that God’s love can use both means. My heart’s well-formed longings. My responsible reaction to what confronts me.
I think that Chryse and I have experienced both over the long-seeming span of 2025, but I am more struck by how frequently God has given us opportunities to follow our loves pulling us along.
Here’s a goofy example which Chryse finds hilarious. The two of us were out in a wet pasture – this morning the plan was we were going to castrate little Giacomo. (He would be happier in the long run as a docile steer rather than the turbulent existence of a bull.) He probably weighed 150 pounds, and once he realized that this was not a moment of affection with us, he put up quite a ruckus. I was thrown around in the tussle. In fact, Chryse could not quite get the deed done, so we had to call our faithful neighbour in to help – meaning that Giacomo had a lot of chances to drag me around the topography.
When it was all over, Chryse and I were breathing hard and on the road to filthy, but as we walked back to the gate, I said sincerely and without self-awareness, “Aren’t we fortunate – who would choose to do anything else?”
This, it seems to me, is getting pulled along.
One more example, before I let you go. If you remember, I recently wrote about the wonderful provision of the money to purchase the materials for working pens. Well, those are now finished, and what looks like a maze to the eyes of many guests is a thing of beauty to me. But now, we had to teach/train the water buffalo to use them – especially the alleyway ten feet long and twenty-eight inches wide.
It took eight days before they would all come through the gate, turn left into the sweep tub, proceed through the long, narrow alley, and then exit into the first pen where the feed awaited them.
Really, it only took two days – for everyone but Chungus, the alpha female. She is very intelligent, but she would not go down the alley. And she remonstrated with the others for submitting to what I wanted them to do. You see, Chungus is the least trusting of the mob. The others follow – they want the feed, and they follow Chryse into the alley. They are being pulled.
You might expect me to say that Chungus had to be pushed, but actually we just persisted, and when she got hungry enough she went down the alley, but she made sure that she was last in line and that I knew it was against her better judgment. Will power fighting against pull-factors, turning it into a matter of push.
As Psalm 32 puts it - Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you. (In the original manuscript, I think it also says ‘water buffalo.’)
But again, as we left from this small victory, Chryse looked at me with a gentle smile and said, “I ask you, who would want to do anything else?”
