This is What I’ve Learned... ... When Life ‘Kicks Like a Mule!’

   Years ago, when I was pastoring in Wyoming, most of the men in my church were big game hunters, and so I learned to hunt with them.  The rifle I chose to hunt with was a 300 Winchester magnum, and it kicked like a mule. The load I used in that gun was a stock grained bullet, that I practiced and sighted it in with, but still, it was intimidatingly wallop-full — every time I shot it. 

   Many hunting seasons later though, a friend of mine, hand loaded some heavier grained bullets for me, that he guaranteed would drop a bull elk, dead in his tracks. I kept them separate from the stock loads I used, but over time, got them mixed up, since the brass casings on the shells looked the same. Late in one October, when the day finally came for a herd bull to present itself to me, I took the shot…and what came out of the end of that barrel was not only a shock to that bull elk, but to me as well. And after that, I never shot that gun again, for it did, kick like a mule, straight to my head. 

   In life, a lot of things kick like a mule…and can cause us to become fearful of doing the things, we love to do. It only takes one swift kick, one critical shot, delivered from a friend or a loved one, to stop us dead in our tracks and cause us to become gun-shy, forever.  Never being able to forget the pain of what happened to us.  

   Isaiah 43:18 says, &ldquo ...

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