How long has it been since you had just a few feet of pavement between you and 50 longhorn steers?

Oh, about a month.

That’s right, no fence, no wall, no bullet-proof glass — NOTHING. Just some nice flat pavement for them to build up a good head of steam, as they charge directly at me.

What we saw at the Cherokee Strip Days parade in Enid, OK, this past month was a sight more common in bygone days. Still, even today it was thrilling to watch them walk by. Oh, the risk! The danger!

Oh, the steaks! The hamburger!

But I digress.

There were these guys on horseback moving alongside the steers. I think they call them “cowboys” in that neck of the prairie. Am I right, Oklahoma State? There sure was a lot of orange in that town on that particular day. Not to mention the OSU-Texas Tech football game blaring on the big screen in the downtown baseball stadium. No one was in the stadium, but the volume was turned all the way up, for the whole town to hear.

But it’s those cowboys I want to talk about. That’s the thing about fences and walls – they will come down when enough force is applied. And I can assure you, those enormous steers could supply a lot of force.

But having those cowboys there was better than any wall could ever be.  Why?

Because those cowboys held those steers in check by authority. Those steers didn’t want to charge the crowd, because they honored the authority of the cowboys.

If we want to make sure that we don’t do something that hurts ourselves or hurts others, there’s an authority over our lives as well.

And it’s not the local police.

It’s the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit. They’re all available to you today, right where you are, right now. All you have to do is ask them.

Just take a look a video of these majestic creatures as they strolled through downtown Enid on a bright, warm October day.

That’s a whole lot of ribs and brisket walkin’ by. Just sayin’.