HORSE BLINDERS

I once watched a very hilarious video of a race for babies that were expected to crawl to their mums at the end of the race track. Expectedly, the babies just wanted to have fun and did everything but remain in their race tracks. Some of them even turned around and went the wrong way, driven by where they felt they would get more excitement. If anyone of them made it to the end of the race track, it would be a miracle 😊.

That’s just so similar to putting a horse on the race track without Blinders and expecting the horse to finish the race. Horses have peripheral vision and are able to see things happening beside them and to some extent behind them. As a result of this, they are easily distracted or spooked. It’s so easy for them to run off course unless they are made to remain focussed. That’s where the blinders come in. The blinders are carefully crafted to shut out every distraction for the horses, leaving enough space for them to be able to only look forward.

We just got off the mark for 2018 and we have a long race track ahead of us – There’s no limit to what we can achieve in this year! The extent to which we will achieve our set goals depends greatly on our ability to remain focussed on staying on the race track and consistently moving in the right direction. Distractions will never be in short supply, we will have to develop our own blinders that will help us to remain focussed on the finishing line. It is a definitive conscious choice that we have to make.

No one sets goals with plans to fail in hitting the target. However, we easily get distracted and side-tracked by so many other little things and ultimately set ourselves up for spectacular failure. In 1 Kings 20: 39 – 40, a man was given a simple unambiguous task of guarding a man, but he got busy with other nice things, failed at the primary task.

As the king passed by, the prophet called out to him, “Sir, I was in the thick of battle, and suddenly a man brought me a prisoner. He said, ‘Guard this man; if for any reason he gets away, you will either die or pay a fine of seventy-five pounds[c] of silver!’  But while I was busy doing something else, the prisoner disappeared!” “Well, it’s your own fault,” the king replied. “You have brought the judgment on yourself.” (1Kings 20: 39-40)

If we will successfully hit our 2018 targets, we cannot afford get ourselves occupied doing this and that. Prioritization and focus will remain key to the goals we have set for ourselves this year. Without this, goal setting for 2018 will just end up being another tick in the box – it does not have to be so and the power is in our hands to make it not to be so. Let’s make this an unforgettable year. God’s grace abounds for us.